


Guided By the Beauty of Our Weapons

by beaubete



Series: Guided By the Beauty of Our Weapons [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, OC death, brief mentions of child sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1830136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How they're meant to play lovers when they can barely stand one another, Q will never know.  He figures someone in Mallory's office finds it funny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewidowedmrsnorton](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=thewidowedmrsnorton).



> For thewidowedmrsnorton, as part of the OOQ Summer Exchange. The prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _Q and Bond are sent off on a mission (possibly posing as gay boyfriends; i don't know), when they're cut off from MI6 coms for whatever reason. Q's had a huge crush on Bond because, well, his /face/, and Bond comes around through Q's prowess in the field or whatever. Completed mission, fluffly possibly porny ending, something of that sort._
> 
>  
> 
> Much love goes to everyone who helped with this fic along the way, either through cheerleading it or reviewing it, offering beta services, or just being excited that it exists. I adore you all, and without your tireless efforts, this fic may not have existed at all, or at least certainly wouldn't have been worth reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some small changes were made to this chapter on 23/6/14 to fix some incorrect information that was presented as "facts". I apologize for any accidental maimings of other national histories! (and my thanks go to calvincandy for pointing them out ♥)

His fingers are numb, blazing cold streaks of adrenaline catching in his blood as he faces the blind corner.  There could be an agent behind it.  There is likely an agent behind it; not for the first time, Q curses that his mirror was destroyed earlier.  Inspiration strikes—flipping his pocket knife out at hip-level, he peers at the narrow reflection.  He isn’t above hamstringing an agent who appears out of nowhere, isn’t squeamish or shy enough to let himself be overrun.  His mobile beeps and he swears silently, letting his head hit the wall behind him with a hollow thud.  The coast is clear, thank Christ, and he skitters across the open space, the gentle tapping of his dress shoes the only sound in the hollows of MI:6’s abandoned, silent canteen.

He can hear the agent.  Fuck, but he can hear the agent at the far end of the room by the doors and he steps out of his shoes, darting away on now-silent stockinged feet.  He’d liked those shoes, but he leaves them without a thought; perhaps when this is all over he can come back for them, but for now they are a hindrance.  He scoots over behind a booth and his feet give way beneath him, that sick-sliding lurch of too-slick socks slipping on the floor that desperately wants waxing.  It’s instinct that has his knees buckling beneath him to drop into a crouch that almost becomes a roll, and then he’s forcing his way on elbows past the red plastic chairs until he’s face to face with the low planter in the center of the room.  There’s a small door, a cleaning cupboard that is sorely tempting, but he knows it’s not tactically defensible—there’s no way out, and the smear of bright yellow along the edge is damning; he doesn’t know if it is mustard or if it is—still, he lets himself press his back along the thin, cold wood and gives himself a moment to breathe.

A glance at his mobile: Orwell is online—and yes, let no one say Q has no sense of humor, because what else could he call the revisions to his eyes and ears in the building?—and chipped agents are beginning to show up on the screen one by one, little acid-green dots on a charcoal background.  He is distressed to find so many centralized in Q-Branch, his team in fetters already, at the mercy of the very people he is so desperate to avoid.  Almost as if reading his thoughts, the agent in the room speaks up, much closer than Q had anticipated; he flicks the screen with his thumb, reads the call sign: 004.

“There’s no shame in it, Q.  M should be very proud of you.  You’ve put up a valiant fight, much better than I ever imagined.  I think perhaps you’d have made an excellent field agent, if circumstances had been different,” 004 says as he patrols the edges of the room.  Q can hear his voice, the doppler effect as he approaches the east wall of the room.  He won’t go down like this—won’t shame himself by falling so easily.  He can hear the moment 004 finds his shoes and lets out his breath in a shaking whoosh.  Covered by the planter, he kneels up, noses the thick, waxy leaves with the barrel of his gun, and waits.  004 doesn’t stand a chance, the shot landing with a puff of smoke and a paralyzing smack to the middle of his back, and 004 is out, no longer a thing to worry about.  Q spares his prone form an apologetic frown as he slips past toward the stairs.

He’s just got to get to the administrative offices.  Moneypenny will help him, will let him hide in the footwell of her desk for enough time that the stitch in his side will fade; he’s not used to running like this, to the rushing flush of adrenaline that leaves him feeling shaky and as though he may vomit.  He’s personally taken out two agents, but he has to hope his techs have taken out more, any more, or else it’s Q in the face of eight well-trained and experienced killers—six now, he supposes, but even one of them is enough to overpower him.  He works through the maths: he’s taken two, saw two guarding the rest of his branch below in the bunker, knows at least one is a minimum of three floors away and going the opposite direction.  His odds are good, they’re fairly good, and he allows himself a tiny sigh of relief as he sinks shaking to the floor of the lift.  It’s locked with his executive passcode and will not open until he reaches his destination; he’s tempted to slam the emergency stop to give his burning lungs time to recoup.

And then the car shakes, gives a nauseating lurch that makes his stomach twist inside.  The panel slides back and Q curls in the corner like a child, but there’s nowhere to go, no way to escape—

007 drops into the tiny chamber with effortless grace.  Of course it’s 007.  Of course it is.  Q stares up at him with his heart in his mouth, everything coppery and tangy as Bond’s face twists into a sardonic grin.  “I win, Quartermaster.”  The puff of white smoke is thick in the lift, but he refuses to cough, even when the percussive smack of Bond’s shot hits him square in the chest, knocking his breath loose.  The doors slide open and Q tips his face to look—Moneypenny blinks down at him, an exasperated but fond expression on her face.  From this angle, he can see that the Cuban stripe on her stockings is real, and he laughs at the surreal experience.

“Game over, then?” she asks.  He nods weakly.  “Good.  You look like a dog’s end.”

The yellow paint is never coming off his shirt, Q muses, touching the tender area where the paintball struck to see if it is already bruising.  It is.  “Christ, man,” he grouses, accepting Moneypenny’s hand up.  “Did you have to do it from close range?”  Bond shrugs and watches Q activate the all clear from his mobile.

It turns out there are two agents missing when they mass in Q-Branch again.  The techs are sheepish when they reveal 002 tied and gagged in the supply cupboard; unshot, she’s still in the game technically, and her expression as she shakes the lingering numbness from her limbs is rueful.  She’d apparently taken a direct tactic and got herself mobbed for the attempt.  With so many techs swarming her at the same time, she’d had barely enough time to fire off a shot—the yellow smear along the corner of the enormous LED screen shows streaks where Q-Branch techs tried to clean it before their intrepid boss found his way back down, and Q surveys the damage with a moue of distaste, honestly contemplating water pistols as field tech when he imagines begging the budget committee for enough to replace it if it were no longer functional.  Mallory touches the paint with a raised brow.

“Looks like the game got a bit—” he pauses to watch the footage that’s playing on the screen, agents taunting techs with smoke grenades and techs efficiently stripping down 006 to his pants before zip tying his hands and feet together.  On screen, Q snipes 004 in the back and leaves him sprawled on the floor beside the hot dog machine, twitching and covered in yellow paint.  “Enthusiastic,” Mallory finishes.

Q shrugs.  “Q-Branch is competitive.”

“Q shot me in the face,” 0010 complains bitterly.

“Did he?” Bond asks, dark laughter in his voice.  “I found him cowering in the lift like a child.”

“What?”  It’s mortifying, hearing Bond’s mocking laughter.  “I took out two agents on my own—”

“—with a computer programme that told you where to find them.  You wouldn’t have stood a chance without it, and I still found you running away to hide in your mother’s petticoats,” Bond continues.  Humiliation and rage squirm in Q’s belly.

“A computer programme I designed!  I didn’t just pop off to PC World for an off-the-shelf model!”

“Gentlemen, if you would,” Mallory cuts in smoothly.  “It was well done, Q, but the point does go to the Double-ohs.  Perhaps next time.”

Next time, Q thinks bleakly.  “As a test run for the Orwell programme, it worked remarkably well,” he reminds Mallory, eager to remind him of the purpose of the game.  “Once the load time completed, I was able to successfully monitor the positions of all agents identified by the system from my mobile—”

“—and we can rest assured that if anyone were to break into MI:6, Q-Branch will react like a tribe of pygmies right out of National Geographic.  Those assailants will find themselves stripped and bound faster than a virgin on fetish night,” Bond adds, voice droll.  Q’s ears burn.

“You’re only disappointed that they managed to immobilise two Double-ohs,” Q snaps.

“Ah,” Bond agrees, eyes lighting up, “but they didn’t immobilise me.  As M said, better luck next time, Q.”

The disappointment burns.  He’s about to snarl back when his mobile makes a distressed sound, a klaxon that sends his still-juddering heart skidding as he sweeps the game’s detritus away with an easy gesture to reveal—yes.  There, in the firewall, someone is making changes—

“Battle stations!” Q barks, shoving all concern about the game to the side to focus.  There’s someone in the system.

It’s hours later when they’ve finally traced the attack back.  He’s still not certain of the full extent of the infiltration—it looks like the system may only have noticed as their visitor was modifying a back door for easy reentrance—though dozens of secret files look touched.  He finds dirty fingerprints everywhere, with a depth that makes him feel ill; the entire time he was off playing war games, from literally minutes after the start of the game until the moment his scans detected the changes being made, there has been a presence in the files.  Many of the files are old, most are useless, but some of them—Skyfall, Devil May Care, Carte Blanche, Silverfin—appear to have been read for entertainment.  There are traces of copied information in Thunderball and a few of the other files; all of Daylight seems to have been ripped from the database wholesale, even though the file is tremendously old, and he assumes there was something in it that appealed to the visitor.

But despite the visitor’s delicate touch, he’s relatively easy to track down.  There’s something deceptively straightforward about the approach, something that doesn’t sit right with Q as he easily traces the signal back to its source.  As he goes, he closes up holes behind himself, but it leaves him with an eerie feeling; after Silva, anything this easy makes him nervous, and the obvious trail makes him wonder if the real visitor is setting up a patsy.  It’s too simple to find Tomas Novotny, third year student at Czech Technical University, too simple to find a student ID and a backstory that includes a stormy history typical of children of a certain age in that part of the world.  Q prints the file quickly and doesn’t let himself be distracted by guilt.

He shouldn’t be surprised to find Bond in Mallory’s office, but he is.  Bond gives him an inscrutable look over the rim of his glass of scotch when Q enters, and for all the world Q feels like a child who’s interrupting his Daddy and his friends to show him a picture he’s drawn.  He hates this feeling, even now isn’t sure where this brutal animosity between Bond and himself has sprung from, though he’s self-aware enough to recognize that he’s contributed, encouraged Bond’s sneering attention.  It’s the way the man underestimates him that stings at his skin so—

Tanner  interrupts his thoughts with a subtle cough and Q finds himself dragged back to the matter at hand; he passes over the file to Mallory reluctantly.  “That’s what I could find,” Q tells him, resisting the urge to clench his hands like a schoolboy in the headmaster’s office.  

“Tell me,” Mallory says idly as he flips through the pages.

“Tomas Novotny, born 1985 in the Czech Republic, six years before the dissolution of the USSR,” Q starts.

“A notable event in your young life, I’m sure, but the rest of us are aware of when the Soviet Union collapsed,” Bond notes dryly.

“Jokes about my age again?” Q asks, and suddenly he’s terrifically tired.  He’s aware that it may be adrenaline crashing, but he refuses to allow himself to sink into the comfortable leather chair at hand.

“Please continue,” Mallory says, and he’s so obviously trying to head off the squabbling before it gains steam that Q finds himself blushing with shame.  Bond looks satisfied, knocking back the rest of his drink before helping himself to another.

“Novotny’s presence on the web is fairly straightforward,” Q continues, frowning.  “He’s relatively easy to track down.  A student at the Technical College—I’ve put his transcript in for you: a few computer classes, some history; looks like he’s reading languages, though—he’s even connected to Facebook.  I—M, sir, this all feels too easy.  He’s got this whole history available, down to the sister killed in a bomb blast, and it’s just that that’s not normal.  For the people capable of getting in to have that much history available about them.  I could have Googled him, for god’s sake.”

Mallory’s brow knits as he looks at the photo, and Q knows what he’s seeing: painfully young, Novotny is dark, serious eyes and a head full of tousled curls.  He’s attractive in a vague, unobtrusive sort of way, sober and sad-looking, and on paper he’s absolutely brilliant.  There are obvious attempts to defect on the page, and Mallory already knows that the attack appears to be less an attempt to destabilize the system than a casual stroll through the spy fiction section of a secret library, Novotny shuffling through the most interesting titles without so much as ruffling the pages as he’d pulled the ones he wanted from the shelf.  There’s no such thing as harmless in their profession, but this is as close as it gets.

“Sounds like a young man who’s got in over his head,” Mallory says aloud, and Q winces at what he knows is coming next: “—not unlike certain other boffins I happen to know,” Mallory continues.  “I’m reluctant to put out a kill order.  He’s very young.”

“Twenty-nine isn’t so young,” Q mutters mulishly.

“Seven years older than our Q,” Bond adds.  Q refuses to rise to the bait.

“By the time I was twenty-nine, I well knew the difference between right and wrong, not to speak of the differences between MI:6 case records and light reading,” Q leads.

“Because you’d already been picked up here, probably,” Mallory returns, and Tanner shoots him a sympathetic glance from across the room.

“Well, yes, but—”

“It would be a feather in our cap to retrieve another tech genius from the edge of the world.  I feel reluctant to leave him where he may be noticed by powerful men who may want more from us than a bedtime story,” Mallory says.  Q can see the order before it comes, writ in the way Mallory’s thumb slides along the edge of the file before handing it to Bond.  “Bring him back here.  One thing’s for certain: we can’t leave him where he is.”

“With pleasure,” Bond replies smoothly.  It’s a relatively dull mission; Q’s blood boils at Bond’s sly look.  “We’ll stock Q-Branch with wunderkind.  Perhaps this one likes explosives?”

“Considering all that childhood trauma, I’d imagine not,” Q manages tightly, nodding to Mallory.  “If we’ve finished…?”

“Of course, Quartermaster.  As soon as the systems are back online, go home.  You look exhausted,” Mallory notes, and he knows that it’s meant kindly, but Bond bites on a snicker.  It’s not helped by Tanner rising from his seat to follow him into Moneypenny’s office beyond.

“Water pistols.  Water pistols that jam—water pistols full of kerosene that jam!  And I’ll show him a bloody explosion,” Q fumes the moment the soundproof door is closed behind them.  “Wunderkind!”  It’s hard to keep even a hint of the hurt from his voice.

“You’ll have to resolve it, of course: this tension between you,” Tanner says firmly.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d call it pigtail-pulling,” Moneypenny chimes in from her desk where she’s already pulling up flights to the Czech Republic.

“It’s Bond being an arsehole about my age,” Q says flatly.  “Route him through Moscow.  On a cargo plane, if possible.”

“He’s not allowed in Moscow, not until we clear up that issue with Station R,” Moneypenny replies absently, already sinking into the search.

“Resolve it.”  Tanner’s tone leaves no room for argument.  “It’s detrimental to the whole operation, and it’s childish besides.”

“I can’t work with him,” Q mutters, shuffling.  His shoes are still in the canteen, he realizes, and one of his socks has a hole in the toe.  He sighs; he really must look like shit.  “I’ll try, Tanner, you know I will.”

“Try harder.”

“I’m not actually a child, you know,” Q says, and he knows his tone is peevish, belying his words.

“Could have fooled me,” Tanner tells him, brushing his protests to the side.  “What with how the two of you were back there bickering like you’d been told to share the toys.  It’s worse than unprofessional, Q, it’s dangerous.”

And he deserves a bollocking for it, Q knows, but he lets himself collapse into Moneypenny’s chair with a tired huff.  “I do try,” he offers, but Tanner’s raised brow puts paid to any attempts at defending himself.  He’s tried, on many occasions, to get a rise out of Bond as blamelessly—or as tracelessly, at least—as possible, and he knows he can’t feign innocence.  He gives Tanner a sheepish smile and Tanner sighs, shaking his head.

“That was a nice bit of code, though—Orwell, really?” he asks, sinking into the other chair with a laugh.  “And you accessed it on your mobile—?”

::

The sun is pale and watery as Bond leaves the airport.  Prague is always this way, when it’s not on fire; Bond nudges his sunglasses up anyway, sidling away from the crowd into the city’s unique blend of history, cold concrete, and the derelict leftovers of communism.

He hunts the boy through public record first, digging into the traces Novotny's left behind himself.  He'd never tell Q, but it is a little unnerving how easy it is to find him, as if he were only ever looking to be found.  Bond traces him back to student housing, an empty, sparse room in an empty, sparse concrete block of a building left over from the city's turn as a communist capital; now it's a place to put the local kids when the decadent western tourist-students fill the student housing in better parts of the city.  It says more about Novotny than a better flat would: small and dark and grim, the flat is impeccably clean, and one wall of the room is completely overwhelmed with electronics, just monitors and towers, some old and grey, mixed with newer pieces and everywhere wires stringing them together like colorful rainbowed bridges of technology.  Bond imagines it's not far from what Q's room must look like, then laughs.  

It's a cold, lonely room, for a cold, lonely man.  Novotny's not in, hasn't been in in a few hours, it looks like.  Bond accesses Q's file again on his mobile, marvels again at MI:6's grand new digital age with everything accessible in seconds; no more need to store unsecured paper files or go off half-informed, he can pull a case in seconds from the electronic brain in the Circus's basement, more information than he could ever read in a lifetime, and all of it ready as needed.  According to Novotny's schedule he's still in class and will be for another twenty minutes, so Bond has the time to prepare for him.  

He cases the apartment slowly, peering into cupboards and drawers for weapons but finds none.  That's suspicious, too—Bond's known people in the former Bloc, and while the sort of friends James Bond would know may not be indicative of the average former Soviet, he's never known them to be without any form of protection at all, especially those who'd lived in these old buildings which were rarely situated in the best of neighborhoods.  Bond had passed no fewer than four suspicious-looking teens smoking on corners and stoops on his way in, and part of him worries for Novotny if he doesn't have even a hunting knife to guard against intruders.  Then again, Bond reasons, most people didn't expect to find MI:6 agents in their homes when they came back from their lessons.  

The computer setup is strange.  Bond may not be a member of TSS, but he's no slouch when it comes to technology, either; the chair at the desk—the only furniture in the living area aside from a beaten couch that looks to be trying to sink its way into the floor slowly under the weight of old food containers and dust on it—groans under his weight, but the computer responds eagerly enough under his fingertips.  An initial poke around reveals the usual school papers and projects, as well as the type of Russian pornography that walks the line between distasteful and illegal, full of girls surly and young enough that Bond can feel his lip curling in disgust at their reluctant, unenthusiastic rutting.  This isn't what he's looking for; it takes him a moment to peel back this initial layer to find a much more interesting core: Novotny is, it turns out, one of those agents in a malware scheme—this one appears to entreat the victim to send a paltry five pounds to a charity intended to fight the very porn houses producing the videos he'd found earlier, stills of underaged girls with semen in their eyes both shaming the victim to mercy and titillating them to urgency; it's well-done, he has to admit with a wry laugh, and either way he doubts the girl being called Irina Imirova sees so much as a penny of the money—more than likely, it all goes to fund more movies.  The whole thing seems to lead up to a kind of low-level criminality that supports Q's research, but he can't completely shake the idea that there's more to be found.  He digs deeper still, searches for the latch under the rug that will reveal Novotny as more than just a petty criminal, but there's nothing there.  The door creaks.

Bond has his gun at the ready before Novotny makes it into the room fully, gesturing at the boy to drop his school bag and kick it over silently.  On the computer monitor, twelve year old Irina is being sodomized as he opens the bag.  Novotny closes the door to the flat gingerly and sits on the couch as Bond removes the textbooks one by one.  There's nothing inside, nothing dangerous or even of note; Bond ruffles the pages just to be sure, then nods his head to the screen where Irina is watching the camera with dull eyes and the faceless fat man moves behind her.  "Child porn?" Bond asks wryly.

"She's legal where it was filmed," Novotny says in clear, barely accented English.  His eyes flick to the screen, but he's uninterested.  "But that's not really why you're here, is it?"  

"No," Bond agrees.

"I've known they'd send someone for me as soon as I saw them fixing the changes I was making.  Do you know him?  The one who was fixing my code?  He's very famous among people like me.  I felt like I was meeting a film star, you know.  It was a close encounter."

"He's good at his job," Bond agrees warily.  "He noticed you right away."

"Three hours after I got in," Novotny corrects, smug.

"He was a little busy."

"I know.  That Orwell program is a stroke of genius.  He's very funny.  Is he handsome?" Novotn asks idly.  

Bond grins.  "You'll find out soon enough.  He's going to be your boss."

Novotny's face changes at that, all forced banality falling away to reveal a hunger and an eagerness that Bond hasn't seen before.  "My boss?  So you're taking me back to London?"

"Will that be a problem?" Bond asks.

"Of course not.  When do we go?  I'll need time to pack, but I can leave tonight.  Will we go tonight?"

The enthusiasm in Novotny's dark eyes is unnerving to Bond; he sits quietly while Novotny shoves a few articles of clothing into a ragged leather satchel.  "Don't you have anyone to say goodbye to?" Bond aksks quietly.

Novotny pauses, frowning.  "No, of course not.  Did you not look me up before you came to get me?"

Bond doesn't respond; he's learned that silence is the best interrogation tool, and he's not wrong—Novotny opens like a flower seeking sunlight.

"Yuliya died when I was a little boy.  She couldn't help it, I think.  The bombs went off wherever there were people, and she was a person.  There isn't anyone else."

"No employers to give a notice to?" Bond asks.

"They will assume I've been taken into custody and will forget about me soon enough," Novotny says.  "If you think they haven't already noticed you, you're wrong.  No one is that subtle."

"Then why have they let me sit here and wait for you?"   A feeling of discomfort swells in Bond's stomach along with the sensation that something is wrong.

"I am unimportant, a coder who creates the tools they use and ultimately disposable.  They would be glad to be rid of me, I'm sure—they could find someone else to do what I do for less, perhaps someone who doesn't have a habit of hacking into the secured database of MI:6.”

"True," Bond concedes.  "Still—"

Novotny stands abruptly, shouldering his pack.  "Are we leaving now?" he asks.  Bond's stomach churns.

There are two tickets waiting for him at Vaclav Havel Airport, an agent from station P pressing papers into his hands and ushering them to the jetway through a rabbit warren of secret tunnels and passageways that seem to dump them directly into the first-class cabin of a small plane with remarkably few problems.  The flight will be short—barely two hours from wheels up to wheels down—and Bond settles into his seat after discreetly cuffing Novotny to his own.  Novotny is withdrawn now, pensive as he stares from the window into the growing gloom of the late evening.  They'll gain an hour along the way, but it will still be late when they reach headquarters, and Bond sighs.  There's no whisky while he's guarding someone who is technically a prisoner, so he settles into his seat with ill grace, winking up at the flight attendant who offers him a bottle of water with a flirtatious smile.  Novotny grunts, turning to the window, and Bond shrugs at her apologetically.  When she wanders on to help the other passengers, Bond cracks open the bottle and drinks it in one slug; Novotny peers at him over one shoulder like a child in a fit of pique.

"Try to sleep," Bond tells him, reaching down to pluck the in-flight magazine from its pouch.  "You're in for a long night."  

Tanner greets them at the airport with an armoured car.  The city is dark around them as they drive into headquarters, and Bond thinks.


	2. Chapter 2

Novotny’s on his best behavior.  It’s a little bit disconcerting, those blank, dark eyes, but he can’t quite put into words that anyone will take seriously exactly what he’s feeling.  There’s jealousy, certainly, gnawing sharp and deep at his backbone, the knowledge that Novotny—this young-looking man—has gotten the best of him.  Q is used to being the best, to the pressure of eyes on him as everyone tries to follow his genius and predict where he will move next.  There’s competition in having Novotny around, and he can’t deny that part of him hates that more than the rest of him thinks he should.  He glances at Bond’s smug face and tries not to scowl like a disappointed child.

“I am,” Novotny starts, “very grateful to you, Mr. Bond, Mr. M.  At home, things are—” he pauses, “—no good.”

“Prague was lovely when I visited during Uni a few years ago,” Q tells him dryly.  The look he gets from Novotny is strange, complex and layered and full of thinly-veiled distaste.  It takes him aback, leaves him cold and a little bit surprised.

“You visited as a tourist,” Novotny says, and Q looks away at the curl of Bond’s lip.

“Lots of history,” Bond offers.

“I’ll keep it in mind when planning my next holiday, gentlemen,” M says.  “What do you mean, Mr. Novotny?”

"The things I've done," Novotny starts with a shudder that looks almost entirely put on.  Q gives Bond a look over the Novotny's head, but Bond just shrugs.  It's infuriating—does no one else feel that this has all been too simple?  Mallory prompts Novotny to continue.  "For food, for rent, tuition—"

"—my research showed that your tuition was paid by an anonymous benefactor," Q interrupts.  "A benefactor who may not have known that you were his beneficiary."

"Your research," Novotny says flippantly, and Q is sure that the sound of his teeth grinding is audible in the room.  Mallory gives him a look of concern, and Novotny and Bond sport twin expressions of smug satisfaction.  

"My research is why you are here today, Mr. Novotny," Q reminds him crisply, and Novotny gives a little laugh.

"I am here because I wanted to be here," Novotny says.  Q turns to look at Mallory and Bond, gratified to see concern on their expressions at last.  Novotny is in the process of failing the interview with remarkable aplomb, and it will be satisfying to send him off to prison with a jaunty wave; Q sinks into his chair with a slight, smug smile on his face.

"But why do you want to be here, Mr. Novotny?" Mallory asks, leaning forward.  Novotny sighs.

"I am sure you've been aware of the political situation—far more than most, no doubt."  It's a careful ploy, non-information that sounds certain and tells them nothing.

"We are," Mallory says carefully.

"Then you understand why I would rather come work for England.  These things have cycles, Mr. Mallory, and I've no doubt that we are within a few years of some very familiar actions from the east," Novotny says vaguely.

"From Russia?" Bond clarifies.  Novotny gives him a halfhearted shrug.

"England is stable.  England is calm, and England can protect me.  There's nothing so sentimental as 'home' for me, not back in Prague; I can make 'home' wherever I am.  I'd like 'home' to be somewhere worth calling 'home' for once," Novotny tells them.

"So you hack MI:6?" Q asks.

"To make you pay attention to me.  I've heard that MI:6 likes that sort of thing."

Q's ears burn.  Novotny is—he has no right—to be told off by a hacker, a foreign thief with no connection to the country—to have his own history thrown in his face—Q's mind splutters on for a few more moments, missing Novotny's next few words.

"—and when will I meet him?" Novotny is asking as Q finally manages to secure his frustration, to bottle his indignation and move forward with some semblance of professionalism.

"Whom do you mean?" Mallory asks.

"Him, him," Novotny says impatiently.  "The hacker who runs your TSS.  I want to meet him."

Bond's grin at that is nearly catlike.  "Why, Mr. Novotny, did we forget to introduce our Q?" he asks, gesturing.

It's almost comical, the way Novotny's face changes as he takes in the taut line of Q's shoulders, the way he's gripping the arms of his chair to keep from throttling Bond.

"You?" Novotny asks, and the blatant disbelief is galling.

"I'm sorry to disappoint, Mr. Novotny," Q manages dryly.  "He's failed this interview, M.  If you have nothing more for me, I'd like to go home and get some sleep before assisting 003 on that mission tomorrow morning?"

M sighs, pushing back in his chair.  "I wish it were that simple, Quartermaster.  We have the issue of a hacker who knows his way into your systems.  He's done nothing so dangerous, but we can't leave him out in the world.  I do think he'd make a valuable asset to your team, and while it's obvious that the two of you have started off on the wrong foot, I maintain that he's worth trying out.  You'll take him down to TSS, then, and introduce him to Powell.  Don't deal with him personally if you don't like, but I want to test drive him in the department for a few weeks.  If it doesn't work, then you may fire him and we'll look into what to do next, but he has a brilliant mind.  It would be a shame to throw that away, especially in someone so young.  A couple of weeks," Mallory says finally.

"Can I not oversee the hiring in my own department?"  The question bursts out of Q before he can stop it.  The room is silent, Mallory looking at him with reproach in his eyes and Tanner refusing eye contact.  "Rescinded," Q manages, flushing down to his toes with humiliation.  "My apologies for speaking out of line."

"It's been a long few days, Q," Mallory says kindly.  "I'll have Tanner take him to Powell."

He slinks out of the office with shame on his lips, and he's already tapping out a cigarette when he reaches the stairwell everyone uses to sneak a smoke.

"It's illegal, isn't it?  Smoking in a government building?" Bond asks behind him. lifting the cigarette from Q's hand as he follows him into the stairs.  The air is hazy with stale smoke from other illicit smokers; Q considers snapping back to get his cigarette back from Bond, but it's just not worth it.  He taps out another and lights it, sighing into the fresh burn as it hits his lungs.  

"Fuck off, Bond," he says on the exhale, words more breath and steam than sound.

"Rough day?" Bond asks.  Q looks at him incredulously.

"Were you not in that room just now?"

"You shouldn't be so harsh on him," Bond says thoughtfully.  He steals Q's lighter and presses the flame to the end of his stolen cigarette.  "He's half in love with you, poor thing."

"Such terrible taste," Q mutters.

"Mm," Bond agrees, blowing smoke up into the dark.  "Christ, what kind of cigarettes do you smoke?  These things are vile."

"They're herbal," Q admits, flipping out the pack to show.  "Trying to quit."

"By making them as disgusting as possible?" Bond asks.  Q grins.

And that's the damnedest thing about Bond: when he's not looking, Q finds himself ridiculously charmed by him.  He knows everyone thinks he hates him—everyone, perhaps, except Moneypenny, but then she always assumes everyone's fucking everyone, or that they'd like to be; it's projection of the worst kind—but he doesn't.  Bond's taunting leaves him with a hollow pit in the middle of his stomach that would hurt if he weren't so used to it.  "I don't want to work with him," Q confesses.

"You'll have to.  It's part of being a grownup—working with people you don't care for."

"Which is why I deal with you," Q says.  Bond laughs.   

"Did you really find nothing suspicious at all about how easy it was to find him?" Q asks, because if there is an agent he trusts with his department's safety, it's James Bond.

Bond is silent for a moment, taking a long drag from his cigarette before releasing it with a wince.  "Does it matter?  If Mallory wants him hired, he's hired."

"M wouldn't have—" Q starts.

"Don't," Bond barks, pushing away from their comfortable conversation tense and angry.  "Don't talk about things you don't know.  She hired who she wanted; she wouldn't have given your petty quibbles any mind, either.  Mallory has hired him.  You'd better be able to deal with that."

The door slams as Bond leaves, only the lingering scent of his cologne and the still-burning cinder of his cigarette left behind.  His own cigarette tastes like ash in Q's mouth.

He's on his way out when Tanner catches up to him.

"He's settling in well," Tanner tells him helpfully, jogging until he's caught up and walking apace toward the doors.  Q realises he's being steered carefully back to the lifts.

"Mallory wants to see me?" Q asks dryly, and Tanner gives him a sheepish grin.  The doors close behind them and Tanner swipes his badge, locking it until it reaches M's office.  "Going to give me that bollocking I earned earlier?" Q asks.

"You don't want a reputation for being difficult to work with," Tanner agrees genially.  "I'm not telling you to be a team player.  You don't have to be happy about everyone you work with.  Lord knows I hate half the people I see every day."

"You're supposed to say 'Present company excluded'," Q jokes.  Tanner raises a brow and continues..

"But you have to act like you give a damn for the chain of authority.  Like it or not, M is your senior officer."

"There's something wrong with Novotny," Q says.

"And you have three weeks to find out what.  Well, I suppose it'll be a little less by the time you get back—"

"Get back?"

"M will explain.  There's a—well, you'd probably best see it for yourself."

Q stares at the lighted dials as the lift rises, stomach sinking.

::

The video is, as all such videos tend to be, a casual type of horrifying.  It's set in a sparse background, a basement that could be in any building, on any continent, in any city.  It's mid-morning, and a madman in a low-slung hat is threatening the world.

Bond watches the small screen as the man weaves elaborate conspiracy theories, talks about the West forcing its police-state nose into Eastern business, voice and eyes bitter and cold as he talks about the way foreign powers—he seems to have the terrorist's typical hatred of America, of course, but Britain and Australia catch their own fair share of vitriol as he spits and bites his words condemning foreign action—have carved his homeland into pieces small enough to eat.  That's the metaphor he uses: slicing his homeland into bites the way you would for a child, in hopes that the rest of the world wouldn't notice the countries being gulped up one by one.  There's a surprising amount of patriotism for a country that's been dissolved these twenty years and more, a moment when Bond is certain that the man is going to play the anthem of a country no longer found on maps, before he settles in to his point: the man has access to bombs.  Lots of bombs.

He intends to use them to correct a border or two on the map; in a matter of moments, he changes from a maniac to a viable source of danger, and Bond can feel his skin prickling and tightening with that old, familiar burn of excitement that comes when a truly thrilling mission is about to begin.

The door opens and Q is led inside; Mallory replays the tape and Bond watches again, the same key points leaping out at him: assimilation, motherland, reconnection, bombs.  Chisinau.  Mallory sits back in his chair with a frown when it's over.

"Our sources at Al Jazeera intercepted this before it made it onto the air.  They won't hold it forever—would that we were America and could force the media to do what we wanted, but suppressing the tape isn't an option for us.  We've got three days before this goes live, at which point either we'll lose our fresh lead on this man or we'll lose the British Embassy in Chisinau.  Neither of those options is acceptable, gentlemen, as I'm sure you both understand."

"So I'm heading to Moldova," Bond says, already starting to push up from his chair.

"Do stay for the rest of the briefing, Bond.  Only I've taken so long to prepare it, and I'd appreciate it if you'd let me reach the end," Mallory says, voice droll.  "Q.  Is it possible, what he said?"

Q starts in his chair, and Bond is reminded of a small animal.  He's still a bit sore, still smarting from the start of a sentence in the stairwell, and he rolls his eyes before Q can begin.  "I'm quite certain he's bluffing," Bond says.  "It'll save the world a lot of difficulty—not to mention the international political situation—if I shoot him in the head and be done with it."

Q ignores him.  "It is, sir," he says instead, fumbling with his tablet to pull it out before thinking better of it and gesturing fluidly with his hands instead.  "Technically.  It can be done with software.  It happens all the time: someone downloads a file they ought not to have downloaded and picks up a nasty bug besides.  From there, the person operating the file has what's referred to as back-end access, a direct line beyond any form of security, and can emulate the infected system easily on another computer in another location.  It's very simple actually, one of the most basic and easiest forms of invasive system abuse."

"And your modus operandi for years, if I read your file correctly," Mallory says, nodding, and what?  Bond turns to Q, who is beginning to look a bit flushed.

"Well, yes, but—"

"Then you know how to see the signs from both sides of the connection, is that correct, Quartermaster?" Mallory continues smoothly.

"Yes, but so could any computer technician who's worth his salt," Q confirms.  "It's the easiest thing in the world."

"Were you a thief?" Bond asks, surprised.  Q shoots him a look that is pure venom.

"My files are sealed for a reason, Director Mallory.  I don't appreciate them being discussed in a public setting."  Q's voice is crisp, annoyed, and Bond can't stop the sly smile that comes to him at finally getting a loose edge to that unflappable mask.

"Were you a hacker?" he asks, smile widening.  "Novotny said you were famous, said it was like meeting a film star to him.  I thought he was just trying to flatter you so you'd hire him.  Are you famous, Q?  A famous hacker?"

"There's no such thing, Mr. Bond, and I'd thank you to drop the subject of my sealed," Q hits the word hard and sharp, with a pointed look at Mallory's direction, "and personal files."

"In this case, it's relevant to the mission," Mallory tells him smoothly.  "You're the best suited to look into this situation."

"Then I'll set to work right away.  You said the file was digitally submitted to Al Jazeera?  I can trace the origins back from there, find out who sent it quite easily and we can have Bond out at our mystery man's secret bunker within a day to kill for Queen and country.  He likes that idea, don't you, Bond?"

"If it were that easy," Mallory says, shaking his head.  "No, we already know who sent this video, Quartermaster.  His name is Stanescu, and he's a well-known member of MURM, the unionist party in Moldova—a group that wants Moldova to be reunited with Romania."

"Hence the bombs," Bond confirms.

"Hence the bombs," Mallory agrees.  

"That we don't even know for certain he can access," Q reminds them.

"Which is where you both come in.  Q, you'll be on-site looking into this situation for us; Bond, you'll be his protection and backup.  We want to know if he has access to the missile system that he claims to have, and while we know that you could access his computer from here, Q, we believe that he may have safeguards in place to keep from revealing his hand—the computer may be isolated, difficult to access remotely.  Better still, we want you to be able to report to an assassin on the ground in real time: if Stanescu has the access, we want you to let Bond know so that Bond can take him out."

The penny drops for Bond at almost the same time it hits Q—"We'll be—?!" Q demands at the same time Bond blurts, "You can't possibly—"

"Do try to contain your enthusiasm at the prospect of working together," Mallory tells them.  Behind him, Tanner only barely manages to bite a snigger in half.  "Of course you'll be working together.  Each of you is uniquely suited to the task at hand, and neither of you would be wholly successful where, and I hope my faith is not misplaced in this, you'll find yourselves quite successful together."

"I'm  not really trained for the field," Q offers, and Bond snorts, for once agreeing with an agent's attempt to get out of a mission.

"And I'm not so dreadful with computers that I can't actually handle this on my own." Bond reminds them.

"But you'll have Bond with you to protect you, and Bond, you'll be needed for a different part of the mission."

"Oh?" Bond asks, because this sounds more like the type of mission he's used to.  "Does he have a lovely wife that wants distracting, then?"

Mallory shifts in his chair, uncomfortable, and Tanner makes the same gasping goose noise that means he's holding back laughter. "Yes," Mallory admits, "though...."

"Though?" Bond prompts.

"Mr. Tanner, laughing at one’s coworkers does not foster an environment of support and teamwork," Mallory chides as Tanner slips, a harsh bray of laughter echoing in the small space.

"Apologies," Tanner says, and when Bond looks over his shoulder at the man, his face is turning pink with suppressed laughter.  "I have to confess it was my idea, though it is of course the most politic and responsible way of dealing with the unique difficulties presented by this mission.  You'll just have to think of it as a team building exercise, though I won't deny that it's a form of punishment for the two of you constantly being at each other's throats and making everyone around you uncomfortable."

"You'll be working together intimately on the mission," Mallory says to the look of befuddlement on their faces.  It takes Bond a moment for the meaning to hit, but Q goes pale.

"You," Q starts, and Bond has a pleasant few seconds at the sight of Q speechless before the words sink in.

"Intimately," Bond repeats, because surely this is a tasteless joke?  Tanner's taunted him about his supposed pigtail pulling, but their antagonism is legendary around the Circus.  Surely they can't be expecting the two of them to portray anything like a pair of lovers, could they?

"Stanescu is a suspicious man, Double-oh Seven, as many men in his position are.  He is possessed of a particularly lovely wife, according to rumour, though that is all that we have to go on—rumours.  He hasn't let her be photographed outside his compound in several years, and there have been a few suspicious deaths, men who've been said to have gotten too close to Tatiana for Stanescu's comfort.  We fear the only way you'll be able to get near him, as he never leaves her behind, is to portray yourself as no possible threat to him.  An attractive young lover would do the trick, and an attractive young male lover would be more convincing still.  Q will attempt to infiltrate the database and determine whether or not Stanescu can do the things he's threatened, and you'll eliminate him if necessary."

"It sounds so simple when you put it like that," Bond tells him.

"It is."

"It is?" Q asks.

"And Stanescu will believe I'm queer just because I have a hot teenage boy on my arm?" Bond asks wryly.

"Stanescu will believe you because you've made an effort to make him believe you," Mallory responds sharply.  "Double-oh Seven, need I remind you—"

"What if I say no?" Q interrupts.  His skin is turning a sickly green, and Bond peers at him, curious.  "What if I don't feel comfortable with the sexual aspect of this mission?"

"Then your severance package will serve you well for your term in prison," Mallory tells him, and if possible, Q goes even greener.

"Come now, man," Bond says reprovingly.  "He's not trained to—"

"There's been a lot of lip from the two of you lately," Mallory says bluntly.  "Would I have more sympathy if it weren't the fifth time one or the other of you has rejected a direct order from this office in the past week?  Perhaps.  Would I be more sympathetic if this mission were anything less than vital?  Almost definitely.  I will be blunt with you, gentlemen—I don't want to send a desk agent, a member of our executive branch no less, out into the field any more than you want to go.  I don't trust you, Bond, to keep him safe, and I don't trust your objectivity, Q, to keep the mission at the front of your mind when you and Bond inevitably get to squabbling.  And if I could send anyone but the two of you, you'd both find yourselves benched for the better part of a week pending conduct surveys.  We do what needs must, gentlemen, for Crown and glory."

And it's a bit humiliating, hearing it from Mallory.  It sparks a hurt sort of rage inside him, bitter and galling at the idea that he could be benched over the behavior of someone like Q.

"That's not—" Bond starts, but Tanner throws him a subtle shake of the head; even Q is silent in his obviously wounded ego, and Bond subsides, frowning.  It's not, of course, though any insistence on his part will only make him look belligerent and petty.  "I must apologise if my behavior has indicated in any way that I am not fully committed to the successes of this division and its tireless work in service to the Crown," Bond says stiffly instead, sparing Q a glance that Q doesn't meet.

"You're both to report to TSS at 09:00 tomorrow morning.  Eve will have your travel documents, but Powell has already begun the process of arranging the necessary equipment for you both."

"Powell?" Q asks, obviously startled.  "If I'm going on a mission, I'd prefer to outfit us myself."

"Be that as it may, Quartermaster, " Mallory sounds sympathetic, "It will do him good to begin to treat the department as his own; he’ll be in charge of it while you're away.  I trust he'll do a good job or else you wouldn't have already been grooming him as your second in command, and he may be able to turn a more objective eye on the equipment that will suit your needs best.  I'd like you to get as much rest as possible, too, since your flight leaves just before noon."

Q's nod is meek, though Bond can see his throat bob at the word 'flight'.  It fills him with a mean sort of glee to think of Q on a plane after the man has led to a very public dressing down ; Bond is polite and respectful as Mallory dismisses them, but they're barely halfway down the hall when he catches up to Q with a sharp laugh.

"A flight, hm?" he asks.

"Let me make one thing clear to you, Agent Bond," Q replies short.  "That was the very last time I will ever be reprimanded because you are incapable of maintaining a cordial work relationship with me.  I will not lose my position—"

"—which is a very real risk, isn't it, Quartermaster?" Bond teases, watching Q's face go the colour of whey.  He's struck upon it, and something cruel in him won't stop him from digging his fingers into the hidden wound now that it's uncovered.  "Powell isn't as clever as you, is he?  You've never worried about him before; he's downright stupid compared to you.  Isn't that so?  But Powell has a better service score, too.  I've seen the forms.  Hell, I've filled out the forms: 'Do you feel that an adequate amount of respect is granted to you by your support staff, considering your contribution to national security?'  Abso-bloody-lutely not, to be frank.  'Put your back into it'?"

Q is quiet, eyes resentful.  "Then fill out the forms to have me transferred to another station, Double-oh Seven, or recommend I be demoted."

"What makes you think I haven't already?" Bond asks.  He's done nothing of the sort; he's winding Q up to see what new shade of grey he'll turn, but Q frowns, turning his shoulder to Bond instead.

"I don't know what they were thinking.  I can't pretend to be your lover."

"Probably thought it'd be a laugh riot," Bond agrees.

"Perhaps I'll be sacked," Q muses, voice soft, in a way that makes something uncomfortable squirm in Bond's gut.  He hadn't meant—surely Q knows Bond was only trying to get a rise out of him— "Seems the right time to do it.  I can't work with you, Bond.  That much is beyond apparent."

"Then fill out the forms, yourself, Q.  You'd hardly be the first to do so.  Perhaps you'll get your wish—perhaps I'll be transferred to another station.  I could be retired; I'm near enough the proper age for that," Bond suggests.  The words leave a sour taste in his mouth, at least part of it guilt.

Q's laugh is bitter.  "You're just going to get us killed, anyway.  I worry I wouldn't be able to convincingly play your lover, but would you be able to keep your hands off the nearest pair of tits, much less pretend to be queer?" Q taunts, and here is the spice he's been looking for, here is Q's missing backbone.

"Do you know what lovers do?" he retorts, and Q's answering grin is all teeth, angry and snarling.  "Have Mummy and Daddy had that special conversation with you yet?"

"Don't talk about things you know nothing about, Bond.  Don't talk about my family," Q warns.  Bond grants him that one, nodding gracefully.  "Of course I've had sex.  There's no dichotomy—you don't have to choose between virgin and slag, though you seem to have thought so."

Ah, now they're rollicking; Bond bares his teeth back in the nearest thing to a smile he can emulate, no more friendly than Q's own.  "Will you freeze the moment I touch you?  When the mark demands that I kiss you to prove we're a couple, will you cry to have your first kiss taken?  You'll have to tell me now, Q, so I'll remember to be gentle."

"You're an ass."

"And you're a child."

"I'm warning you now, Bond, I won't die so you can get your end in," Q threatens.

"And I'm warning you, Q, that if your complete lack of experience fucks us here, I won't hesitate to recommend you for canteen staff.  You'll be scooping up baskets of chips before you touch another secured document," Bond snaps back, already cringing at his own words as he says them.  It's a low blow, but he can't seem to help himself: "Or will they send you back to prison?"

Q stills, chest heaving.  "Ta, Bond," he manages through bloodless lips.  "Cheers for that."

"Q."

"I'll see you in the morning," Q tells him, backing away.

"Q—"

"I tell you what, though, Bond: I'll try not to cause any international incidents on my walk through the parking garage tonight if you try not to fuck anyone on yours.  Sleep well, Double-oh Seven."

It's a little bit daunting just how thoroughly he's managed to offend the Quartermaster, but then again, James Bond has never really done anything by halves.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Miss Moneypenny's eyes are brighter than anyone's have a right to be this early in the morning; she's clearly decided that the situation is funny, and Q can only resent her for it.  There's tea on the desk and he's fairly certain it's for him, but he ignores it willfully to pick up the passports sitting by her keyboard and give them a flip.  They're old, worn, filled with stamps and visas.  The little orange flap of a sticker on the back is a good touch; it's something often forgotten when a passport's forged.  Q can't help but spare a grudging nod of respect for the impeccable work—according to the document, Will Sterling has left the UK via Heathrow twice in the current lifetime of his passport, once eight years ago in the summer and again almost exactly a year ago.

"Summer holidays in Uni and honeymoon?" he asks.  

Moneypenny shrugs.  "Haven't read the files."

Q flicks through the visas until he finds one that matches the date: Greece.  Stereotypical, but easy to remember.  "Looks like you took me to Mykonos," he tells Bond idly.  "We're staying on the continent this time because you realised I'm not a beach person."

"Married couples don't go to Mykonos for the beach, Q," Bond says, laughing, and Q's ears burn.  Of course they don't.

"We're in Chisinau for our anniversary?" Q asks instead, flicking open the manila folder Moneypenny hands him to scan the QR code with his mobile.  It downloads within seconds, stored securely where he can read it on the plane; he hands the file to Bond to do the same and Bond states at him as though he's got an extra head.  "What?" Q asks defensively.  "It's a long trip, and there'll be plenty of time to read it when I can actually pay attention, rather than cramming the information now."

Bond's brow remains quirked as he tips his head to read the file, and for a long moment the only sound in the room is the wet rasp of Bond's saliva-damp fingertips turning pages.  Q spares a glance for Moneypenny, who's pretending to dig through her desk for more information.  She throws him a wicked, knowing grin.  He ignores it.

"We're coming up on our first anniversary as a married couple," Bond confirms from the pages.  "You've heard that there is a technology conference in our hotel, and you're taking advantage—apparently William Sterling has his husband wrapped around his little finger.  We'll see," Bond comments idly as he turns the page.  "You've requested a romantic getaway to the edge of the Western world for nefarious reasons: you're looking for a patron.  You sell computer viruses."  Bond sounds amused at that.  "Custom ones."

Q can feel his pulse in his fingertips and barely manages to keep himself from snatching the file away.  "Oh?" he asks as mildly as he can.  "Does it list my portfolio of work?"

"None that I recognise," Bond says dismissively, but no, Q's quite sure there will be some potent softwares on the list indeed.  

"I've been on hiatus, I presume," Q suggests.

"Yes," Bond agrees.  "Took a few years off for Uni, floated on the money you earned for the last one you designed, which—hey, now that looks a bit improbable," Bond laughs, touching the paper to make sure he's reading it correctly.  "—says you took a million pounds with that software.  I'd think someone would have noticed."

Someone had.  Q can feel his throat going sticky, and he breaks his self-imposed rule against touching the peace offering in front of him, swilling back lukewarm tea until he can breathe again.  "Done subtly enough, it's not that unlikely," he assures Bond.  "I'd imagine it would lead to one hell of a job opportunity after, though."  It had.  He'd taken it—the other option had been an orange jumpsuit.

"I'd hire a hacker who could do that," Bond offers.

"Novotny can do that," Moneypenny supplies helpfully, and Q could kiss her for taking the focus off.  "Powell turned in Novotny's CV this morning—he claims to be behind at least half a dozen recent scams.  One of them was big enough I knew the name from an email from my Gran."

"That's when you know you've made it as a hacker," Q says absently, breaking from the cup long enough to smirk.  "You get an email from your gran warning you about yourself."

Bond looks curious, but he's quiet, still flipping through the file. He coughs.  "We met while you were on holiday in Greece.  I'd imagine the honeymoon was meant to be a romantic touch."

Q hums in agreement.  "Rod's definitely a big softie."

"Is he?" Bond asks, amused.

"Of course.  One of us has to be a hopeless romantic, and if you're thinking it's me, you've got another think coming," Q says.  It's a ridiculous conversation, one that almost feels like flirting; the wheezing bang of the ancient printer kicking in starts Q from the fond smile he can feel forming on his face.  Moneypenny leans over to retrieve the boarding passes she's printed.  

"Ready to go, gentlemen?" she asks cheerily.

A lump sinks in Q's belly.  "As I'll ever be," he agrees.

"Don't forget to head down to TSS on your way out," she prompts.  "They've got weapons and toys for you, Double-oh Seven, and Q, there's a shiny new laptop in it for you.  And Medical has a scrip for you, too, if you're of a mind to collect it.  We can send one of the junior techs to pick it up for you and bring it to TSS if it'll save you some time."

"Please do," Q asks.

The ride in the lift is only barely strained.  Q's about to congratulate himself on handling being in an enclosed space with Bond without bickering for five minutes when Bond opens his mouth: "Prescriptions?" Bond asks.

"For the flight," Q clarifies.  Bond's grin goes wide, taunting.

"That's right—Eve mentioned something about that.  You're afraid of flying," Bond teases.

"Are you actually incapable of not being an ass for ten minutes?" Q demands, relieved to be interrupted by the bell announcing they've reached the lower levels.  He leaves Bond in the elevator as the doors open, cursing himself for letting his guard down.

The techs in the room look busy at first; Powell has taken command, standing at Q's desk talking to Novotny quietly.  There are a number of small cases on the table between them, and Q can see a hard shell case that must be the laptop he'll be using, its dull silver body gleaming from the floor by Powell's ankle.  There's a cross-body strap hanging from it, and Q idly wonders how much it will weigh ; his luggage is fairly light, but a heavy laptop will slow him down.  Perhaps he can convince Bond to play doting husband and carry the suitcase?  Will Sterling's not the kind of man to let someone else handle his laptop, and to be honest, Q isn't either.  The techs in the room won't meet his eyes as he leads Bond in.  He pretends not to notice.

"Good morning, Powell.  I understand you've got equipment for us," Q says brightly, sparing a nod for Novotny.  He doesn't wait to see if it's returned, instead lifting the laptop case to the desk to inspect.  There's a biometric lock on it—a nice touch.  He presses his thumb to the lock and waits for it to click open, lifting the lid to peer at the build inside.  It's sturdy, well-built.  Heavy as a box of rocks, but exactly the kind of system he'd used when he'd been more than pretending to be a nefarious programmer.  He thinks perhaps for a moment if this is the same computer he'd surrendered upon his arrest, but he knows it's not; that computer's locked away, its hard drive in a secured safe at Scotland Yard where even MI:6's Quartermaster can't retrieve it.  It amuses him that it's so protected, and he imagines those in charge of his case and rehabilitation treating it like a selkie's skin: if only he could get his hands on it again, he'd be unable to resist the pull of organised crime, slipping back into the black market like a seal into water.  

"Morning, Q," Powell says carefully.  "I'll be checking in with you via email every day.  I hope you won't be annoyed with all the questions I'm sure to have," Powell says.  It's sweet of him to try to reassure Q that he's not going for his job.  Q pats him on the hand.  "It's a custom build," Powell says smoothly, moving on to the laptop.  "TSS-designed processor—clocks in at just over 5 on speed without overclocking it—with extra memory built in—currently 32, but you can add to that if you need to.  SSD, of course, optical built in, but you'll have to lift it from the case to use it.  There's not much it can't do, but we tried to leave it at specs you could reasonably expect to find outside of a development lab."

It sounds perfect.  Q smiles and Powell sighs with relief.  "Thank you.  Did Medical—?"

"Oh!  Yes," Powell says, fishing in his pocket to produce the small white pill bottle.  It rattles loosely when he hands it over; Q twists the cap to reveal four small pink pills.  "Roger just brought it over for you—ought to be enough to get you there and back again."

"And none left over for play," Q says ruefully, pocketing the bottle.  "Probably for the best,"

"And for me?" Bond prompts.

"Bog standard, I'm afraid," Powell tells him, offering the by now familiar case for a Walther PPK, distress radio already snugged into the foam securely.  There's an earwig next that connects to a matching model for Q—they'll be able to play it off as Will's paranoia, and Q can't help but agree that it will be comforting to have a direct line to Bond on the mission that they won't have to pretend to hide.  It's short-range; the agents in Bucharest who will be monitoring them remotely will be able to connect, but it doesn't reach all the way back to London.  For all intents and purposes, they will be flying blind.  There are a few more odds and ends, and then they are equipped, Bond's gun in its holster and Q's fingers wrapped around the handle of the laptop case like a lifeline.

Q looks around the room at the agents who are sneaking peeks at him but still pretending to focus on their projects.  "Best of luck to you, Powell," he offers with a small, only slightly bitter smile.  “You'll do well, I'm sure."

"Only until you get back, sir," Powell says steadily.  Q offers a handshake, spares a glance at Novotny, and turns on his heel.  If he lingers, he's only going to focus on how much this feels like dismissal from the job he's loved for so long, the job that's probably saved his life.  He's silent on the lift to the garage where a company car will be waiting for them to take him to the airport.  For once, Bond understands not to talk.

He hasn't had much reason to go through Heathrow's International terminal in a very long time; he's aware that it's busy—one of the busiest in the world, and easily the busiest in Europe—but he's somehow unprepared for the din of so many people and so many languages at once.  They're cleared for the security precheck, of course, Bond coaxing him through the significantly shorter line with only a discreet nod to the agent who checks their passports.  "Mr. and Mr. Sterling," the agent confirms, and no one mentions the weapon under Bond's arm when he goes through the scanners.  On the other side of the line, there's a stretch of luxury stores as far as the eye can see, but directly ahead is a coffee shop and Q brushes Bond's arm gently, tipping his head with a small smile.  It only takes Bond a second to drop into character with him, standing patiently with their hand luggage while Q orders his tea and uses it to take two of the pink pills before putting the bottle away.  On impulse, he buys Bond a bottle of water, handing it over when he returns to Bond's fond smile.

"Those things will have me on my arse within an hour," Q confides, scooping up the laptop and his bag from the floor as Bond splutters on his drink.  "You'll have to take extra care for me, Mr. Sterling."

"I think I can manage that, Mr. Sterling," Bond tells him, chuckling.  "Let's get to the gate, then—we ought to be boarding any moment now."

The gate isn't as busy as the other gates they pass, hundreds of passengers headed off to America or China, planes full of people bound for Africa or Australia.  There are still people there, though; Bond checks in with the gate clerk, apparently warning about Q's unease with flying judging by the way he gestures back to Q as he sinks into the seat.  That's fine—if Bond wants to paint him as an invalid in order to get on the plane early, it doesn't particularly bother Q.  It will give him more time to adjust to the fact that he's really doing this—really boarding a plane to Central Europe, really putting his life on the line in a way he's never really considered may be asked of him, really planning to immerse himself in the world he'd left behind when M, the real M, had approached the scrawny young thing he'd been and offered him an opportunity that didn't include regulated showers for the rest of his adult life.

"Not so good with planes, are you?"  The woman's voice startles him out of his morose thoughts, and he smiles at her queasily.

"How could you tell?"

"You've got that look about you," she says confidently.  Her hair is the kind of watery, faded blonde of a woman who'd had sunny, golden hair when she was younger; she's dressed as a businesswoman, her suit crisp and clean in a way that makes him feel a little grubby in his anorak and jumper.  "I'm Marta."

"Will," he offers.  Marta smiles.  "I don't fly much," he confesses.

"It's not so bad," she tells him.  "Takeoffs and landings are the worst, but if you don't mind my saying so, your gentleman looks like the type to be okay with a little bit of a squeeze during those parts."

Q can feel his face heating, and Marta's laugh is delighted.  "I'm sure," he murmurs, absolutely certain of the opposite: if he is even sitting next to Bond, the man will almost definitely be flirting with the stewardesses, perhaps drinking heavily, maybe even both.

"He'll take good care of you," she assures him, and what is Bond doing that's taking so long?  Q flushes down to his toes. "How long have you two been together?" she continues, and it's practice for his cover story, so Q puts on his most charming smile.

"A few years.  While I was in Uni," he says.

Marta clucks disapprovingly.  "He's a little bit of a cradle robber, isn't he?" she asks, teasing.  "Looking for a pretty young man like that."

Her candor is brilliant, forcing a bright laugh from him that draws a few glances in their direction.  "Don't worry for my virtue, Marta," he replies, still laughing.  "I'm afraid you've got it the wrong way around."  And he's seen Bond in the basement swimming pool of MI:6; inspiration strikes: "I saw him at the beach, wearing the tiniest—there really wasn't any question about it for me.  I knew I would have him."

Marta laughs at this in return, her eyes crinkling at the corners.  "You're one of those boys, aren't you?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Q says loftily, and Marta laughs again.

"So you had him, and then?"

"Well I wasn't going to give all that up, was I?" he asks, leaning close to her to give Bond's body an appraising look.  He cocks a brow at them, and Q gives him a cheeky little wave.  

"I see what you mean," Marta agrees solemnly.  "But you can't be thinking with that all the time, can you?"

Q can feel the dirty grin falling from his face, because no, a relationship isn't formed on how hot one partner is, no matter if that partner is James Bond.  A bubble of wistfulness rises in him and he flushes, looking down at his hands.

"Of course not.  Rod's terribly sweet to me," he tells her, letting his mind drift off to what a relationship with Bond could actually be.  "He's playful, doting.  Sometimes he's overprotective, but I like knowing I'm cared for.  He makes me feel safe," he confesses.  Next to him Marta sighs enviously.

"And pretty to boot."

"And pretty to boot," Q confirms.  "Swept me right off my feet, to be honest.  I still wonder how I managed to be so lucky."

"Lucky?"  Bond's voice cuts into their talk smoothly, and Q looks up at him, startled.  Bond's face is affable, fond, but his eyes are opaque and unreadable.  He sinks into the seat next to Q and Q lets himself curl toward him, surrendering to Bond's magnetic presence.

"Darling, this is Marta.  Marta, Rod," Q introduces, smiling faintly.  Marta takes Bond's hand with an eager smile.

"I'm the one that's lucky," Bond tells her, skimming his hand affectionately over Q's hair in a move that makes him shiver.  "Are you bragging about me, darling?" Bond asks low in Q's ear, and Q blushes deeper.  At this rate he's going to be a tomato, hot with embarrassment and mind already slippery with the medication.  "They'll be boarding us in just a moment, love.  Do you think you can manage until then?"

Q thinks back to Marta's suggestion and bites his lip; from her expression he can tell she's thinking of it, too.  "I'll be alright," he reassures him, smiling.

"Marta, a pleasure," Bond says, offering his hand for her to shake.  Marta throws Q a wink at the grip and Q can't help laughing a bit at that.  Then there's an attendant over to guide them onto the plane; his legs are already distressingly wobbly, and Q finds himself deposited into the aisle seat of the airplane.  Bond looks down at him for a moment, then reaches over to close the window, gesturing him into the inner seat.  He has to admit the wall makes him feel more secure, as does Bond's protective stretch between him and the other passengers as they board.

"So what the hell was that?" Bond asks genially.  His voice is pitched low; anyone listening would assume he's flirting, not that he's reading Q the riot act for engaging with another passenger.

"She was kind," Q says defensively.

"We're not here to make friends."

"I'm not going to be rude to someone who wants to talk to me," Q retorts.  "I'm not you."

"Don't do it again," Bond warns, and really?  Q huffs.

"I'll talk to whomever I please, thank you very much," Q says tartly, turning toward the wall.

"Don't be ridiculous, Will,” Bond tells him.

"I'm going to try to sleep through the takeoff, so if you'd kindly stop talking—" Q suggests, somehow irrationally annoyed with himself.  He's been making things up, of course, about some imaginary relationship; it shouldn't feel like he's mourning a real lover to have Bond prove that he's not the sweetly romantic Rod Sterling after all.

"It honestly doesn't make any sense that you're so scared of planes," Bond says, sinking into his seat.  "There's nothing to be frightened of, and it's frankly ridiculous that you'd have such an exploitable weakness."

"It's not a weakness, it's sensibility."

"It's an excuse not to act as field support.  Didn't you send Moneypenny to me in Macau because you were scared stiff at the idea of flying over yourself?"

"Not at all," Q denies.  "If I'd wanted to attend to you, I'd have gone—I'm on a plane right now, aren't I?"

Bond looks skeptical.  "So it wasn't that you were too afraid of planes to come out to Macau—then why send a different agent instead?"

"You needed practical support, obviously.  And I was a bit busy piecing together the remains of my department; we can't all just jaunt off to the far reaches of the world at a moment's notice.  Some of us have obligations."

"You had obligations that weren't supporting your agent in the field?" Bond asks.

"I had oblig—" the yawn threatens to crack his jaw, taking him by surprise.  He's not in the mood to fight, anyway, so Q casts Bond a grumpy stare and turns to the wall, leaning against it to feel the vibrations of the plane.  Bond looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn't. Q wakes briefly in the air, the hum of the plane steady and lulling through the thin pillow that's been tucked beneath his head.  Bond's moved the arm rest up between them, and his thigh is a heavy, comforting warmth along Q's own.

Q is muddy-headed when they land, the late afternoon sun searing his eyes as though he's hungover.  He lets Bond drive the rental car without complaint; Moldova is beautiful, lush and green and something like a page from a story book, but he imagines he'd appreciate it more if he didn't feel still thick and slow with the medication.  It should wear off soon, but for now he follows Bond like a zombie, wordlessly trailing behind him with his suitcase and laptop as Bond approaches the beautiful gilt desk with an easy smile.  The concierge takes one look at Q and smiles.

"Here for the conference?" she asks knowingly, and Bond turns back to Q with a face so indulgent it leaves Q spinning for a moment, roller coaster waves of irritation and attraction hitting him in cycling spins until he's dizzy.  

"Conference?" Bond asks, eyes playfully suspicious.  Gone is the man who didn't even stop to make sure Q had cleared the car before locking it with the remote fob, and in his place is Rod Sterling, who looks at his lover as though he's hung the moon and something silly as misleading him into a tech conference is merely an adorably impish trait.  Q tries to play guilty playing innocent, and the concierge laughs.  "I think perhaps so," Bond agrees with a wry grin.  Q's meant to look guilty here, but all he can manage is a sheepish smile as he leans heavily away from the hand holding his luggage.  "Busted," Bond whispers sotto, and a laugh escapes the concierge.  Q muses how long it will take Bond to decide he'll need to seduce secrets out of her.

Their room is gorgeous, well-appointed and lovely and built for a young couple on a romantic getaway: as few walls and partitions as possible flowing easily between the small sitting room with its plush, decadent couch and elegant glass coffee tables to the bath so deep and huge Q imagines he could nearly turn laps.  The gem of it all is the bed—the single bed piled high with silks and cushions and a mattress Q would have to stand on tiptoe to lift himself onto.  It's large enough for two, but it's built for coziness, and Q is already imagining the bounce of the couch's springs beneath him; it's not that he isn't certain it'll be more luxe than his own bed back home, but he throws a look of longing at the sensual confection and can't help imagining the weight of a doting lover pressing him back into it.  He wishes for a moment that Bond's missions didn't have a propensity to turn tits up, because he'd like to be able to come back here, perhaps with someone who doesn't hate him.

"I'd imagine she thought it was funny," Q tells Bond as he moves through the space, hunting a place to leave his tatty hand luggage that won't look ridiculously out of place.  Bond grunts, and Q can see he's already armed with a glass of scotch—he'll be drunk before the set up is  finished, Q muses, dropping his bag in the corner.  

"Unpack it all and hang it up.  You'll get wrinkles otherwise," Bond instructs, already carefully hanging his garment bag of suits to do so.  Q sits back until he's finished, watching the grey and blue and charcoal wools and silk blends as they're drawn from the bag.  There's a dinner jacket, too, and Q thinks back to his own, a thing that he'd bought almost as soon as he'd been promoted to department head, tailored and prim and completely unworn over the past year because it was easier to duck out of the formal events than it was to attempt to put on his bow tie by himself.  It's one of the things he hangs once Bond's moved away; Q gets a pleased buzz at the pained expression on Bond's face when he realises what the black thing he's drawing from the mass of clothes in his bag is. "We'll have it pressed before tonight," Bond suggests, and Q's smile drops.  

"Don't get too drunk before the party," he tells Bond cuttingly.  Bond ignores him with a soft sound and the clink of crystal as he refills the glass.

Impulsively, Q kicks off his shoes, setting up shop in the middle of the bed.  It's as comfortable as he'd imagined, mattress pleasantly firm beneath the piles of luxury surrounding him; he sinks into the duvet with a happy little sigh and cracks the case on the new work laptop with a gleeful grin.  It's beautiful, powerful, responsive to his touch.  It connects easily to the secured satellite device he's brought, and thank god the person putting it together knew better than to set MI:6 as its homepage; an obscure web forum he remembers from a time before greets him, its lime text on black background dated and comforting at the same time.  Impulsively, he tries his old log in, and the text comes back that the account has been frozen.  There's a new username waiting for him in one of the text files on the desktop, a clear warning that his behavior on the site will be monitored closely.  He logs in.

It's easy to sink into the familiar web pages.  There have been some necessary updates to the forum, and not for the first time Q marvels at the depth of penetration MI:6 has within this deep sanctum; his new account has more features than his old one ever had, and he'd been an established member of the community.  He searches his username out of mild interest and isn't terribly surprised to see all traces of himself gone, knowing that for their own protection the others who use this place as their home base will have moved on as though he never existed.  It would be the damnedest thing for the site to be found due to a web search, after all; turnover rate here is such that he doubts the current group would recognise him by name, anyway.  It's humbling; for a time, he'd been one of the best-known and most-admired—and envied—members of the forum.  He guides his way through the familiar branches of conversation until he finds a thread about the conference.

"Drinks in the lobby from 7," he tells Bond idly, as if Bond needs to know where there will be more alcohol. Bond grunts in acknowledgement.  

 


	4. Chapter 4

Downstairs, there are more people than Bond has been expecting, all in dress that rivals Q's own well-cut but out of fashion dinner jacket.  It's a bastion of strange fashion, with the occasional styled American and far fewer women than men, though again more than he expected.  Bond is playing Sterling again, public face smooth and genial as he guides Q over to the bar and orders a whisky neat.  This will be his first real attempt at presenting a doting front; for a moment, he envies Q his practice on the woman at the airport, but this is still familiar territory—he sinks into Rod Sterling's skin with an ease that seems to make Q uncomfortable.  The tech geniuses around them don't notice the difference, anyway; Q is colder than any lover Bond's had, and Bond lets himself idly wonder what Rod and Will's life would actually be like.   

"Boring," Bond mutters into his drink.  Q doesn't even spare him a glance.

It’s fairly easy to tell who the important people in the room are; Bond recognises the designer names, the Saville Row cuts.  What’s surprising is the amount of attention some men like Q, men in tatty suits that look like a Uni student’s catch-all for interviews and funerals, are getting.   Q flows through the crowd like a fish in water, at once completely obscure and invisible, though Bond can tell he’s gathering eyes. He has to admire Q’s technique: a thin, awkward-looking man followed closely by a man who, even by Bond’s own admission, can be easily made as muscle. They’ve been there half an hour without speaking to anyone, but there are discreet signs of interest coming from certain parties. One of them is Stanescu.

The man’s wife is remarkable, if the blonde woman on his arm is his wife.  She’s wearing a tasteful gown that outshines the other women in the room—she is the empress above them, and it’s not just her dress: every inch of her screams pampered, and Bond takes in her roving eye with a chuckle to himself.  She’s bored stiff.  Q touches his arm.

“Rod, this is Jason,” Q—Will—says, gesturing to a mawkish man who clutches his bottle of beer as if it were a safety net.  “He’s been telling me about his work for Dominic Greene, before his death.”  The name jolts in Bond’s blood, but Q doesn’t appear to make the connection.  “It sounds like it was a tremendous gig; I’m sorry to have missed it.”  And he does—sound sorry.  Bond’s skin feels cold and numb.

“When was that?  While you were retired?” he asks.  Q shoots him a pleased little smile, and Bond chafes at the idea of being led.

“Yes, I think so.  You’ll have to forgive me, Jason: I don’t recall offhand when Greene died.  I was on a break for Uni and I couldn’t even let myself touch a computer for the first two years for fear I’d end up right back in it.  I did all my reports on this ancient typewriter and felt like Ginsberg doing it,” Q says with a bubbly laugh.  Bond knows precisely when Greene died.  Resentment burns in his gut, but he pastes on an open smile.

“Then it must have been quite near the time we met,”—2008, Bond is saying, and he sees Q nod as he gets the message.  “I think I remember hearing about it at the newsstand on my way to Greece, actually.”

“Greece?” Jason asks, which sparks a boring conversation about a holiday that never happened, a whirlwind courtship even more impulsively made up than the characters it happened to.  Bond checks out of the conversation again, carefully scanning the crowd.  His eyes meet Stanescu, glance off, come back to Tatiana and the sly smile she throws his way when she notices him.  He smiles back, lifting a brow, and sips his drink.  It’s not surprising when he finds Stansescu and his wife at his elbow a moment later, Jason already ducking away.  There is a hierarchy at work here; Bond dispenses with it with a single quirk of his lips.  Q looks stunned.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Stanescu starts.  As a first volley, it’s brilliant—dismissive of Bond entirely, it establishes that even the mysterious programmer with the focus of every eye in the room may be below his notice.  Bond lets himself sink into a vaguely offended, protective pose at Q’s side.

“Will?” he asks softly.  Q throws him a look, eyes soft with affection, and offers his hand.

“Will Sterling.”

“And?”  He means Bond, and the sweet change that sweeps over Q’s face at the mention of his lover is masterful, subtle enough that even Bond almost misses it.

“Rod Sterling,” Bond says firmly.

“Brothers?” Stanescu asks, and Q’s peal of laughter is bright.

“No, not at all.  Rod’s my—?”  Q cuts off with an inquisitive look, and Bond can feel the humour radiating from him in waves.  “Bodyguard,” Q says, settling.

Bond laughs.  “I’d have said ‘husband’, though it’s telling where I rate!”

The response doesn’t seem to impress Stanescu; Bond almost doubts they’ll pull it off, but Q laughs again, touches Bond’s hand with a shy, secret brush of the fingertips, and Tatiana visibly melts.  In the face of his wife’s reaction, Stanescu can’t help but smile, pointedly nodding at their hands until Q laces their fingers together, blushing across the tops of his ears.  “Not many couples at these events,” Q confesses.  “At least, I haven’t been to one in a very long time—are they still seedy dens of iniquity after ten?”

“And worse,” Tatiana confides playfully.

“Such a pity these things always seem to become orgies after a while.  There’s never anywhere to talk about projects,” Q says, and it’s not subtle. 

Stanescu bites with a small smile: “Come to my party, then.  It’s small, just a private get-together, a few like-minded individuals meeting over drinks.”

“We’d love to,” Bond says, and Stanescu’s raised eyebrow lets him know he’s not the power player here; Q offers his hand to shake again and Stanescu smiles.

The party is in Stanescu’s suite, more than a dozen obviously paid girls with bright, plastic smiles and short designer dresses are there to flirt with a few familiar faces from the meet and greet; to a one, the designers are awkward, some thin and swimming in a borrowed jacket, some fat enough that Bond imagines he can hear their buttons straining when they pass.  Q is the only one with his own bodyguard, and the others give envious looks to this obvious symbol of status as they walk behind Tatiana into the room.  It’s clear they’re not looking at her—it seems even the desperate are not stupid—and for the first time Bond feels like the piece of meat Moneypenny’s always accusing him of treating women like.

There is a bartender in the room, of course, and his vodka martinis are passable—potato vodka, which has always tasted thick and mealy on his tongue, but Bond won’t shun his host’s choice in drinks, and the vermouth is excellent quality. Bond sinks against the wall to watch Q mingle with what he hopes is a fond-looking smile and not a pained grimace for more alcohol.

“You don’t like these events.”  Even her voice is sultry, thick as caramel with the crisp crack of burned sugar edges.  Tatiana’s eyes are teasing when he glances over at her.

“Too many people.”

“Fewer than twenty,” she rejoins.

“And eighteen more than I thought we’d be spending the weekend with.  It’s our anniversary, and the devious little berk picked this place,” Bond confides.  Tatiana laughs.  “Rod Sterling,” Bond offers, careful not to offer his hand; queer or not, he imagines Stanescu would have his hands for touching his wife.

“Tati,” she tells him, expression knowing.  It’s all cheek when she leans in to buss his cheekbones with her own, but when Bond steals a look at Stanescu, the man’s engaged in a lively conversation with Q.  There is a crowd forming around the two of them, appreciative noises filtering over the soft strains of music.  Bond wonders what they’re talking about.  “You’re very proud of him, I can tell,” she confides in him, and he turns back to her with a private smile.  “Have you been together long?”

“Years,” he agrees.

“And yet you have the look of a newly-wed couple about you.  I’m jealous.”  It’s a prompt and bait in one; Bond takes it.

“And you and—?”

“Pavel never introduces himself properly,” Tatiana teases, smile wide at the rim of her glass.  “He thinks it makes him more intimidating, but it just makes it harder to talk about him behind his back.  Fortunately, I know everything there is to know about him, so you’re in luck.”

“Pavel,” Bond confirms.  The name feels intimate on his tongue.  “Have you and Pavel been together long?”

“Oh, a decade, at least,” Tatiana says offhand, waving her empty glass for another, and Bond can recognise a change in subject easily.  Interesting.

“You’re here because Pavel wanted to attend the conference?  That’s what Will tricked me for,” he leads.

“Oh, no,” Tatiana says, voice dropping until Bond has to lean in to hear her.  “Pavel is shopping.  He wants a new pet genius; didn’t you know that’s what this conference is really for?  Let the others, the nerds,” the word sounds ironic on her tongue, playful and dismissive at once, “let them have their sex in fancy hotel rooms and pretend they own the internet.  They don’t.  They don’t have any idea about what happens at these things, really.  There are people who come here looking to be bought and people to do the buying.  And Pavel’s about to buy your boy.”

Some memory of Irina must flash over his face; Tatiana is quick to soothe it, tutting at him.  “Buy?” Bond asks, concerned.

“If he is who Pavel thinks he is,” she confirms.  “He’s very famous, you know.”

“Like meeting a film star,” Bond repeats, bemused.  Tatiana nods.

“Pavel was very excited; apparently there were people who thought they recognised—”  The words are cut off abruptly as Stanescu looks up at them, smile going cold and distant even as Q’s warms and becomes familiar.  Stanescu guides Q with a hand at the small of the back, and Bond has a fleeting thought for the familiarity of his hands on someone else’s lover if just the sight of his own talking to another man upsets him.  “Shh,” Tatiana shushes playfully.

“Shh, my darling?  Why shh?” Stanescu asks suspiciously, sidling in to guide her further from Bond.

“Lady’s secret,” she tells him, but before Stanescu can cut in, Q reaches for Bond, cupping his ribcage in a ticklish grip that immediately focuses Bond’s attention.

“Darling, I have the most incredible news,” Q gushes.  “Did you know, I’ve known Stanescu for years?  Before my break for Uni, at least.”

And Bond knows he’s going to have to force Q to tell him the truth, because that’s not something TSS can whip up in an evening, not something to be faked.  A connection to the criminal—“Oh?”

Q hums in agreement, nuzzling in as though he’s drunker than he is.  Bond realises that he hasn’t seen Q drink all night, but the subtle whiff of vodka from his shirt collar says he’s had at least one.  “I swear I’ll explain it when we get back to the room.  For now, just pretend I’m telling you drunken nonsense and get me out of here,” Q mutters fast.  His voice is low and intimate; Bond finds it easy to cup the back of his head—those riotous curls are as dense as they look—and laugh fondly.

“I think this one’s for bed,” Bond tells Stanescu apologetically.  “Will we be seeing you around this weekend?”

“If he’ll let you out of bed that long,” Tatiana answers for the both of them.  Bond laughs.  Stanescu doesn’t.

Bond’s scooping a wobbly Q into his arm to guide to bed when Stanescu stops him.  “Mr. Sterling.”  Bond tips his head.  “I will be blunt with you: your William, I want to keep.  He is valuable; I have work I want him to do.  No one else could do it as elegantly as he can.  You? I could live without.  Still, your William, he thinks you are exactly what he wants, and so I will keep you around.  Show up here tomorrow morning.  Bring that pistol you think that you are hiding underneath your arm; you will be my bodyguard a few days.”

It’s the strangest job offer Bond’s received in a while.  He’s cautious not to look at Tatiana as he smiles wryly.  “Yessir.”

“Now go, put him to bed so he can start working in the morning.”

Bond nods.  What else can he do?

::

"Spill."  Bond's voice is brusque, his irritation palpable.  Q closes the door behind himself carefully and eases into the room, peeling off layers as he goes.  All he wants right now is a shower and bed, not an argument.  Not a soul- and past-baring discussion in which he confesses the evils he has committed.  He reaches for the knot of his tie and pauses to kick off his shoes.

"Now."  It's not a suggestion.

"No."

"Then do I tell Mallory you've compromised this mission?" Bond asks, and really, how he can say that after spending the evening flirting with Stanescu's wife despite explicit instruction to the contrary—

"I want a fucking shower first, if that's alright with you," Q bites out and Bond releases him, stepping back with suspicious eyes.  Q sighs.  "I'll tell you, I just...it's been a long day, Bond.  I'd like a moment, please."

He knows that Bond's not stupid, knows Bond is sizing him up, trying to decide whether or not he's telling the truth.  To be honest, even Q isn't sure whether he's lying; he lets out a sigh of relief when Bond steps back, waving vaguely at the shower.  There's not much disguising it—the room's open layout leaves little to the imagination, but there's a half wall where Q can leave the scraps of his dinner jacket and the clean pajamas he intends to slither into.  Bond doesn't look, though the bricks and very soon the steam are there to preserve Q's modesty.  Bond is completely uninterested, he knows, but Q puts his face to the wet tile of the shower and tries not to let his frustration eke out of him audibly.  The water pressure is lovely, almost like a spare set of hands working over his shoulders and back, and a shiver washes over him as he remembers against his will all the shower seductions Bond has committed over the year or so he's known him.  He's being ridiculous, he knows too, but it's such a stereotype to say that he hadn't noticed how lonely he was until Bond began to pretend to love him.  He lets his forehead hit the tile with a hollow thunk.

Bond is waiting for him when he gets out; he's collected Q's cufflinks from the table where he’d left them and put them back in their case, handing it over almost reproachfully as if a disapproving look will make Q care more about dressing better.  Q shrugs, tucking the case into his shaving kit, and moves to the bed.  After the shit day he's had, he deserves it, he decides, and Bond is silent as he watches Q wriggle his way to the center of the bed,  Q's not sure if his expression is surly or defiant, but apparently it says 'fuck off' clearly enough that Bond sinks into a chair a few feet away, tugging easily at his own cufflinks before rolling up his sleeves to brace his elbows on his knees.  "Talk."

"About what?" Q asks, because he doesn't know where to start.  Where should he start when he's talking about doing something so stupid?  "I was a hacker, I guess you'd say.  A proper one, the kind that actually zombies systems.  I stole a lot of money.  I got caught, and rather than go to prison, I accepted a job that started as little more than probation and eventually became my career." He waits for Bond to say something, say anything.  He doesn't.  Q picks at the knee of his pajama bottoms, amazed again at the way Bond so effortlessly leaves him feeling like a kid.  He won't offer more information before Bond speaks.  He won't.  He refuses.

"Stanescu recognised you from that," Bond says finally with a tip of his head  to acknowledge Q's willfulness.  "And Novotny."

Q draws a breath.  "Probably," he confesses.  "I was well-known."

"Like meeting a film star," Bond repeats again, and Q frowns.

"I wish that you wouldn't—"  It's pointless to ask Bond to stop, though, so he lets the matter drop. Never mind how much Novotny's idol worship unnerves him, how much the buzz when people at the reception had begun to recognise him had left him feeling naked, how much the way that Stanescu's eyes had lit with recognition at the thought of Q being that hacker who doesn't exist anymore turns his stomach, leaving him nauseated and dizzy.  It’s incredibly difficult, not because he wants that admiration back but because he doesn't—he would have been just as happy forgetting that that time in his life had occurred, and not for the first time since this mission began he imagines himself requesting a leave of absence when he returns.  It would be the first in the ten years since he's begun working with MI:6; he must be due.  He can't take much more of this stress, either way.

Bond is waiting for him to say more, but what can he say?  Bond had laughed at the crime that had got him caught; how can he say that he'd pulled a dozen more like it, that if he wanted he could still slip from the face of the planet? That he doesn't want to anymore, that there are lifetimes of cash that the government hasn't found that will go back to the economies of an island nation after his inevitable death in the name of England?  He watches Bond watch him and takes in the exact moment Bond realises that there is nothing more Q will say—that there is nothing more to be said, but he knows Bond won't see it that way—his eyes going cold and flinty.  Bond is silent as he takes the spare bedding from the cupboard, and Q can see him bedding down on the couch.  The bed feels cold, and he spends more time tossing and turning than sleeping.

He’s still awake—it must be nearly three in the morning and he’s still staring at the ornate plaster ceiling with distant, hazy eyes—when Bond speaks again: “I will find out, you know.”

Yes.  Q knows.

He wakes in the room alone, Bond's blankets and pillow put back into the cupboard neatly so that not even the housekeeping staff will know that the happily-married Sterlings are sleeping in different beds.  There's a cup of coffee and a croissant waiting for him on the dining table already gone cold; Q doctors it with as much milk and sugar as he dares and drinks it fast, contemplating ordering another when he spies the carafe nearby, still warm to the touch.  He even manages to think charitable thoughts at Bond for the peace offering before he sets the dirty dishes in the hall—up and down on both sides are identical dishes, identical trays.  No peace offering after all, then, and Q shuts the door with more force than necessary, padding back over to the bed with his computer.  It's hard not to let Bond get to him, and he contemplates for a moment a morning of lolling in bed with his thoughts.  The sheets are body-heat warm, slick against his skin in a way that makes the small hairs at the back of his neck stand on end, and he gives himself a moment to daydream huge hands on his hips turning and pushing him among the lush piles of sleek fabrics.  It's an entertaining fantasy.

Too bad it's wholly unrealistic, he scolds himself, turning back to the computer.  There's a private message from Powell when he logs into the forum, and Q takes a moment to troubleshoot TSS's morning problems before settling in to dissect the work he's been commissioned for.  Stanescu is a man of simple desires—he's asked for an easy bot for zombifying computers similar to Romero, the program Q'd used all those years ago to take over a computer and bend it to his will—and Q cracks open a .txt file to get his thoughts organised: Cordyceps.  If he can plan out a software that looks like the real deal, he can best figure out where to slip in the sneaky bits of hidden code that will infiltrate the software.  Insidious and unexpected, Q's software can convince Stanescu's computer that it meant all along to reveal itself to international databases like an ant poised waving for the nearest bird to swoop down and pick it up.  At the very least, he knows that he can kill his host quickly at any time, too.  

He's chatting idly with Powell about the best way to slip in a tracer that will alert their own systems the next time Stanescu gets anywhere near MI:6 webspace when another friends request pops up; Q glances at the account and dismisses it, unfamiliar with the username and unimpressed by the image of a cat being used as the icon.

He's poking at Cordyceps idly, still shaping the image in his mind of the final product when the first pop up appears on his screen.  "Rude."  Well, that's simple enough, but Q has no idea what this person means.  He types back:

"Sorry?  Do I know you?"

"How else do you think they knew who you were last night?" the stranger asks, and Q's skin crawls.

"Did you tell them, then?"

"Stupid."

And it may have been a while since Q's let himself interact with strangers on the internet, but he's fairly certain that the rules of engagement haven't changed that much; he's getting close to blocking the account when he gets another message: "You got what you needed, didn't you?"

He can't deny that he did.  "Thank you, then," he types back.  He can feel the stranger's smug smile even though he doesn't type back.  The cursor blinks at him for several minutes and Q watches it, waiting for the stranger to respond.  Eventually, the window goes grey and a message appears—the user has signed off.  Q grits his teeth at the behavior, the way the stranger had stolen the last word and was probably laughing about it.  About the way that the stranger knew—knew what, exactly?  Knew Q, certainly.  Knew what he was here for, almost definitely, though whether it was just about the commission or for the actual mission there is no way of telling.  He's never seen the username before, not in all of his time on the forum, and while he's been away longer than he was active, he hopes he'd remember anyone who'd known him well enough to recognise him on sight.  He searches his mind for potential suspects, but he can't think of even one—they're all out of commission, in prison or retired or dead.  A chill walks down his back.  He shakes it off and tries to work.

 


	5. Chapter 5

It isn't until hours later that Bond considers that perhaps he ought to have woken Q before he left.  It's been tricky, pretending to be in love with him when he's not there to make it easier on him; Bond nods in agreement as one of the women he's guarding shows him the strap of her shoe again.  They're mismatched—a detail he's been trained to notice—but he won't tell her, except she keeps bragging and it's nails on a chalkboard.

"Balenciaga," he corrects.  Across the table, Tati and Pavel freeze in their conversation.  Their lunch has been more loveplay than anything else, lingering glances from Stanescu as his wife fellates her fork and every man within a mile sweats.  Bond knows better than to be caught looking, he just doesn't care.  Suzana stops cold, perplexed.  "Your shoe," Bond elaborates for her.  "It's not Louboutin.  Obviously not.  You should fire your stylist."

Suzana does not look pleased, but Tati does, and the attention to fashion is deemed homosexual enough for Stanescu's chilly stare to warm a few degrees.  He's even receptive of Bond's wry grin, inclining his head in humour as Tati crosses her legs—her shoes actually are Louboutins, and Bond can see the hidden smile folded in the corner of her mouth, teasing.   

"What would you know about fashion?" Suzana blows into the air with a smoke ring from her cigarette; she looks very elegant.  They all look very elegant.  Bond is bored stiff—

—and then suddenly, he's not.  He's reacting almost before the sound of the shot ringing out has finished echoing in the place.  All around them, people are ducking, running, but it's obvious there's only one target—the crater of melted plastic in front of Stanescu is startling.  Bond has his gun up and at the ready—there, glinting in the corner of the window from the second floor—and shoots, consequences be damned; he won't be shot at.  Tati is shrieking in short, startled bursts behind her chair and the other girls are crying loudly, but they're unharmed; Stanescu has ducked beneath the table and comes up just in time to see Bond holstering his gun again, the assailant already clearly gone, dead or fled.

"Sterling," Stanescu starts.  His fingers curl around the blade of Tati's shoulder, gentle and coaxing, and as her panicked cries slow, then quiet, then stop, he starts again.  "Sterling."

"Yes, sir," Bond acknowledges carefully.

"I....call your boy," Stanescu says. Bond nods gracefully.

Turning away from Stanescu, Bond is sure to touch his ear to bring attention to his earpiece.  Q is in his ear in only seconds.  "Darling, I don't want you to worry," Bond starts.

"I heard gunshots, Rod," Q asks, in character with an immediacy that surprises Bond pleasantly. "What did you do?"

"There was a gunman," Bond tells him carefully.  "I'm okay, but I'd rather you were safe.  Where are you?"

"In the room pouting over my lack of kisses this morning," Q says, and any doubt that Stanescu can hear them dissolves at the quiet yip of laughter from him at that.

"That you were awake for," Bond teases, and Q laughs quietly.

"Come back upstairs to me?" Q prompts—come talk to me where we are not being observed—and Bond spares a glance for Stanescu, who makes little shooing motions.  The change in his demeanor is startling.

"Of course, darling," Bond agrees.  "I'll be there in twenty minutes."

Call ended, he turns back to Stanescu, who is pulling a dazed-looking Tati into a one-armed embrace; they're all silent as they head into the building again.  There should be police, Bond realises as they pass through the lobby unhindered.  There should be an inquiry—it's possible he's shot dead the assailant—but the staff at the hotel act as though there is nothing unusual; perhaps they've been paid for their discretion or perhaps they have their own reason for ignoring what's happened, but the realization leaves Bond twitching in the lift as he guides Stanescu to his suite of rooms.  The other guards are already there, stoic and vague at the door; Bond still does a preliminary sweep of the premises that earns him a deep grimace from the standard guards and a grateful shiver from Tati, who gets a fond smile from Stanescu himself.  There's no one there.

He's about to leave when—"Wait," Stanescu says, stopping him at the door.

"Wait?" Bond asks.

"I want to thank you," Stanescu says, frowning.  "I was unfair to you; your Will, he loves you very much and I did not think you were good enough for him.  You take good care of him?"

"I try," Bond concedes.

"I want you both to come out to my home with us.  I do not care for this conference.  I have achieved what I came to do, and knowing that I am here makes me too vulnerable; I will throw a weekend fete for you instead at home.  Say you'll come."

Bond blinks, genuinely surprised.  "Of course."  He's never had a suspect invite him along for further observation, but he knows he can't pass up the opportunity.  He only wonders what Q will say.  

Stanescu's house is in Straseni, large and white and surrounded by vineyards so idyllic that Bond imagines he can actually hear the bees in the fields as they pass.  Q is working diligently on his laptop and Tati is doing her nails, the shock of the early afternoon already fading.  His options include engaging Stanescu in conversation or staring out the window; Bond sees a great deal of countryside.  He's thankful when the car finally pulls into the gate, an army of servants rushing out to take their bags as Stanescu and Tati lead them in.

"Your home is lovely," Q says.

Tati lights up, curling her arm carefully around Q's.  "Come, I'll give you the tour.  Let the boys settle in and relax."  

Stanescu spares a small smile of amusement at that; after they leave he offers Bond a drink, but there's no connection with Q and Tati away; Bond excuses himself with murmurs of the length of the day and lets himself be led by a maid to the room he'll be sharing with Q.  He hears them before he ever sees them, Q on the bed and Tati giggling at his side; Bond lets himself give them a look of amused concern before Tati's laughter proves infectious.  Q's propped himself up on his elbows, his hair tousled and his glasses missing, and Bond realises with a start that he's never seen Q look so carefree.  He looks young, as young as Bond is always mocking him for being, and happy.  The twisting in his stomach is surprising.

"Are you being naughty?" he asks, and Q's smile drops.  He's behind Tati's shoulder; she can't see his expression, but some shade of it must be reflected on Bond's face because she turns, pressing a lipsticked kiss to Q's cheek fondly.  "I forget, you must be exhausted.  I'm always such a bad girl—I never know when it's time to stop playing and go to bed."  If Q registers the flirting, it glances off of him, and Tati only gives Bond an amused look as Q gathers his things to get ready for bed.  When he slips from the room, she holds up a finger until the water begins to run in the shower and laughs quietly.  "He really doesn't like girls at all, does he?" she asks.

It's a turning point.  From this moment, Bond knows that the mission could go one of two ways: he could follow the mission plan, stick to the parameters as set, and never engage Tati in the dangerous world of espionage.  He chooses the other option.

Her body is soft beneath his hands, warm to the touch and lush in all the ways he's been imagining it to be over the past two days.  If she's surprised by his passion, she doesn't show it, gasping soft pants of breath against his ear as he clutches her, presses his chest to hers and tastes the slick wax of her lipstick.  She's a beautiful woman.

It feels too short when he finally hears the shower turn off, too little time for them to tug their clothing back into place and Tati to fix her playful grin back on by the time Q walks back in, dirty clothes bundled under his arm.  He freezes, staring at them just long enough to be noticeable, before thawing, moving to put his clothes away.  Tati is brisk, businesslike as she presses a kiss to Q's cheek, the vibrant red not as brilliant as it would have been had she done it before his shower.  

"Goodnight, my sweet boy," she tells him.  She nods at Bond.  "Mr. Sterling.  We'll have breakfast in the atrium—I'll come by to collect you, so be dressed!  Or don't," she adds playfully, sashaying out the door with a smile.

Q is quiet, his clothes small in his hand.  The lipstick is stark against his skin; he doesn't touch it, fingertips hovering over the mark he knows is there.  Bond watches as he stands lost in thought, sees the moment a decision comes to him, and watches Q drop the clothes to the bed before striding over.  His fingertips are cool, rougher than Bond would have imagined them to be if he'd ever thought about it—they brush firmly against the corner of his mouth and come back pink.  Q looks disappointed.  Shame pricks at the lining of Bond's stomach as he watches Q roll the lipstick between his fingertips silently, then as he moves to the bedside for tissue to wipe away the smears on his own face.  When Q finally speaks, there's no censure, just a weariness that leaves Bond hot: "Just be discreet, please."

He wonders if Q suspects who instigated it.  He wonders if Q has seen how bored Tati is in her life, wonders if Q even cares about things like that, but the thoughts feel like bile in his throat—he knows they're unfair, knows that Q has every right to be upset.  There are a dozen replies on the tip of his tongue: he still believes that this will be the most efficient way to gather information about Stanescu, believes that perhaps he can convince Tati to defect so that he can lead her somewhere safe away from the kind of man who will eventually get her killed by a rival.  They sound hollow when he opens his mouth, though, and he can't quite bring himself to say anything as Q tucks the dirty clothes into his bag and slips beneath the sheets.  There's no couch, no extra bed, and no way they'll be able to fool Stanescu if he bunks on the floor, so he strips down to his pants and slides into the other side, careful not to touch.  Q is quiet, but no matter how late Bond lays there staring at the ceiling, he never hears him fall asleep.

Breakfast is a solemn affair; there is a paper Bond has to pretend he can't read and Tati chatters away on her mobile, but Q is engrossed in his coffee cup and Stanescu is reviewing reports as he carefully cracks his egg with the back of a spoon.  Bond is just about to lose his mind from boredom when Stanescu speaks up.

"Sometimes the birds in this place, they're too loud.  All night long, birds.  I couldn't sleep at all, it seemed, for birds.  Do you notice?"

"I slept like a child," Q offers.  It's a lie, and an obvious one—his eyes are red-rimmed and his fingertips trembling around his fork.

"No?" Stanescu asks.  His gaze sharpens, moves to Bond.  "You?"

"I didn't notice," Bond confirms.

"Tati?"

In his chair, Q trembles.  Tati shakes her head.

"Just me, then.  Birds, birds, all night, they all want to talk all night.  They tell me: your guest, so bad at keeping his dirty, sticky fingers to himself.  So bad at not touching."

There's a smart remark on the edge of Bond's tongue, but the mute look Q sends him makes it dry in his throat.  He drinks his coffee instead.  When he can speak without croaking, Bond pitches his voice carefully neutral: "Do you mean something?"

"Do I—!"  Stanescu laughs.  "Do I?  You tell me."

"Are you asking Rod if he would cheat on me?" Q asks tremulously, and Bond could kiss him for the offended hurt in his voice.  "You know he wouldn't."

"I hear he would."

"From whom?" Q demands.

"The birds—"

Q cuts him off sharply.  "The birds!  Who?"

For a moment, Bond wonders if Q has spoken too quickly, been too disrespectful, and then something like sympathy washes over Stanescu's face.  "You know this.  You pretend, but you know.  He said."

"Who?" Q repeats.

"The man, the man.  He told me you were at the hotel.  He knows you, says your man has a history.  That he doesn't deserve you."

"That's for me to decide, isn't it?" Q asks, and Bond wants to ask him why his spine has stiffened at the mention of a man at the party, but it's clear he's persona non grata here; he wisely keeps his mouth shut. "How did you find this man?"

"He has secrets for sale," Stanescu says simply.  It's a feeling not unlike plunging into a deep, icy pool—the depth of the community Q has casually admitted to being part of is staggering.  How many more of these men are there out there?  Stanescu, Novotny, Q himself—an entire underground world dedicated to the control of information in ways that the general public is not aware are possible, secrets for sale.  He looks at Q, but Q won't meet his eyes.  

"He's sold you lies," Q says instead, frowning.  He's pushing his spoon through his coffee instead of drinking it.

"He tells me you don't know your man doesn't even like boys."  The accusation is in the middle of the table, ugly and dark.  It occurs to Bond: Stanescu doesn't suspect that they're MI:6.  No, he thinks that Bond is a gold digger, manipulating Q's tender affections for his own purposes.  He could laugh if he weren't so discomfited.  He can still feel Tati's lipstick against his skin.

"What nonsense," Bond says finally.  It's as if they've forgotten he's here; as one, they turn to him with varied expressions: Tati concerned, Stanescu skeptical, and Q.  Q looks exhausted.  For the first time, Bond can see the defeat at the edges of his expression.  It looks like he's been waiting for this to happen, and Bond can only hope that the others are reading it as self-doubt; it looks too much like a lover familiar with habitual infidelity to Bond, and that's dangerous.  They can't lend a moment of credence to Stanescu's accusations; he reaches for Q's hand and curls his fingers around it carefully.  He could say something crass here, expound on mythic bouts of lovemaking—just as false and fantastical as any story about a god—but he doesn't.  Instead, he brings Q's fingertips to his mouth, kissing the pads tenderly.  "You know."

Q rallies himself, face slipping from melancholy to determination with a practiced ease that feels so real that Bond can taste the guilt of being an unfaithful lover in the back of his throat.  "Of course I do," Q says firmly.

It's not enough.  Stanescu looks at Q with pity for a moment, then turns to Bond.  "You don't think he's sexy?"

"Of course I do," Bond says sharply.  

"You don't."

"Do I have to fuck him on the table for you to believe that I find the man I've married sexy?" Bond snaps.  From the corner of his eye, he can see Q flush; he doesn't dare look at Tati, focusing instead on Stanescu's face as he grits his teeth.  He's never had the veracity of his affections in a case like this questioned before—though he's never not actually been sleeping with his partner before.  It's never a good idea—performance is never as convincing as one hopes it will be—but Q doesn't resist when Bond tugs at him, all but yanking him out of his chair and into his lap.

"Wha—?"

Q's sharp, he'll give him that: it would seem fake if he sank into the kiss easily, but he doesn't protest enough to seem dishonest, either.  Instead, he seems to lose his train of thought, sinking against Bond's chest with fingers curled, lashes dropped and trembling as he surrenders.  His mouth is plush somehow despite the thinness of his lips, and he meets Bond's mouth with a familiarity that would be more striking if Bond didn't know that he's watched him kiss hundreds of women since they began working together.  They'd even traded tips, a lifetime ago on a three in the morning watch before they'd begun to hate each other; he offers his lower lip for sucking as Q'd claimed to appreciate and is surprised by the way Q melts into his grip, folding until he's sitting on Bond's lap and Bond can reach the fine-boned corner of his jaw, tipping him into it until he can slick his lips up to the lobe of his ear.  Q shivers in his arms and the thin, quiet sound that escapes is so tender and intimate that Bond can feel a pang of jealousy for the men who get to experience it unbidden; it's Tati's amused cough that breaks them up to realise Stanescu's stormed from the room.

::

The bedroom is cold when they return, the silence painful.  He feels jilted, somehow, and he has no patience for Bond's puppy dog eyes.

Not, of course, that Bond has puppy dog eyes right now.  No, Bond is acting righteously indignant, jaw set as if it is his god-given right to seduce every woman he comes across.  Q could punch him right now and, after a moment of restless energy, does.  

The first thing that registers is that Bond just.  Lets him.  He moves with it, and Q knows he'd telegraphed the hit well enough that he could have avoided it, but Bond lets himself be hit  with barely a grimace. The second is an ache in his hand that spirals up the bones of his fingers into his wrist.  He's going to feel it tomorrow, can already feel it now, and there's a bruise already forming at the edge of Bond's jaw in the shape of Q's bony knuckles. The third is that it hasn't helped.  He's still blankly furious.

"Get out."

Bond starts from his quiet thought, touching his tender jaw carefully and beginning to work the muscle.  It's performative; Q knows he couldn't have hit Bond that hard and it just ratchets his annoyance until he's standing by the bed shaking with it.

"Get.  Out."  The words are clipped; Q can hear his own teeth snapping on the consonants, and Bond's eyes widen.

"Where do I—?"

"Do I look like I give a damn right now?  I mean it: get out.  I can barely stand the sight of you right now, and so help me—"  His chest is heaving, and he's almost as surprised as Bond by this rage.  He feels faint, leaning against the bed with one hand out to stabilise himself.

"Will—" Bond starts, and Q has to close his eyes at the double vision his anger leaves him with.  Bond is.  He's still playing, and.

"Did you even think about me when you were doing it?" he manages quietly.  "At all?"

"I."  Bond's hand on his shoulder; he shies away.

"Don't touch me.  Did you?  At all, even once, did you think about me?  I want an answer."

"I don't have one for you," Bond tells him, which is answer enough.

Q laughs bitterly.  "Then go until you do.  Don't you dare come back until you do."

His eyes are still closed when he hears the door open, closed when he hears Bond stop in the doorway to look at him, closed when he hears it shut and Bond's shoes clicking as he walks down the hall.  He leaves them closed until he can't anymore, fumbling behind himself for the bed.  He pushes himself onto it and lays there still, eyes open and blurred until he has to take his glasses off and scream into a pillow.

How?  How could Bond be so monumentally stupid?  Or, intelligence aside, so disastrously selfish?  He's—again, he's let himself daydream Will Sterling's life; again, Bond's carelessly peeled it away.  This isn't the Will Sterling he's imagined.  That Will's lover respects him, cherishes and adores—

His breath is shaking in his lungs.  He hopes Bond can find a comfortable couch; after that display, no one would fault Will for putting Rod out.  And display—he'd certainly made an arse of himself, hadn't he?  Panting and writhing in Bond's arms like that, falling into the overwhelming charm of the man just like any of the dead women from Bond's missions.

And there's a chance he'll end up dead.  There's a very real chance—they've stretched the very limits of Stanescu's belief, of his hospitality, of his accommodation.  It does him no good for Stanescu to believe him a pretty idiot incapable of controlling his husband, and it's only a matter of time before the stories begin to fall apart because Bond can't be bothered to imagine.  Oh, he's capable of pretending, Q will grant him.  Bond is a fantastic actor, more than capable of portraying love, affection, respect.  It's just that he can't seem to bring himself to believe any of it, any such emotion from him turning out to be skin-deep and halfhearted, a fair resemblance but ultimately forged.  

It's time to get on course, focus on the mission.  There's a signal—hidden, encrypted, not for guests—on his laptop that he's been curious about, and Q has always been the type to bury himself in work to ignore his personal life. He's about to switch to it from his MI:6-approved satellite connection when the realization hits: MI:6.

Because he hadn't been with Bond before he was caught, obviously.  Because no one knows he's with Bond now but MI:6.

Q brings up the forum on his approved connection and waits.  Powell is not on, but his mysterious stranger is.  They have been every time Q's logged in over the past few days.  He can feel his breath pick up; hovering over the link to the user's account, there's nothing there.  No identifying information, no username but a string of numbers and letters.  The icon's a popular photo of a cat.  There's a reason he'd ignored them when they first reached out to him: there's nothing notable about them, and he's starting to understand that that's because it's not who they are that's notable—it's what they know.  And they know entirely too much for comfort.

He's never had to figure out how to break one of his own pieces of tech before.  For a moment, he considers calling Bond in to help—the man's preternatural understanding of the weak spots in his design has always felt a curse before, but now it could actually be useful—but he doesn't dare.  He half suspects he'd break it by throwing it at Bond if he were to see him right now, anyway, and honestly, how hard can it be to destroy a device?

He drops Powell a quick note: AFK for a bit.  BRB.

Then he takes out his tool kit.

::

And Bond knows that he's fucked up spectacularly before—he can think, offhand, of a dozen people who've died for his mistakes and knows that Q doesn't deserve a similar fate, knows that M would never forgive him for Q's death—if Bond could ever forgive himself.  He feels wound, unsure, but if he lets himself doubt for a moment—

"I'm sorry.  I nearly blew it for you, didn't I?"  It's Tati, her usual guard missing; he's wandered into a distant wing of the house, and though he tells himself it was an honest mistake, part of him wonders.  She's clearly been expecting him, her hair lustrous and rich over the creamy gossamer lace of her dressing gown.  There's not much left to the imagination, and Bond presses her back into the room she's come from.  He tells himself it's to keep them from being caught.  Perhaps it is.

"He'll forgive me soon enough," Bond says dismissively.  "Will always does."

Tati laughs dryly.  "Do you still pretend?"

"Pretend?"

"I know who you are.  Do you think there are any of us, the wives of important men, who don't?  We have meetings, discuss.  Compare your bed prowess," Tati taunts, not quite malicious but nearly there.  "Mr. Bond."

Bond stills, caught somewhere between predator and prey, and watches as she moves, stepping out of the elaborate maribou confection of her heels until she’s of a height with him, her movements practiced and sensual and smooth.

Tati tuts at his non-response.  “This is fun.  Isn’t this fun, playing spies?  I can see why you do it.  It’s fascinating.”

And again he’s at the crossroads; he can see where this mission could go.  He could go back to the room, tell Q they’ve been made, and perhaps they’ll make it to the border before Stanescu’s men catch up to them.  Or he could slink into Tati’s personal space, slip his arms around her waist and feel the heat of her skin through the thin, hot fabric.  He could keep betting, keep upping his ante and ignore the bets he’s lost.  Fortune favors the bold, and he’s always been a gambling man; he puts his earwig on the table and Tati smiles, wicked.

“You’re a bad man,” she tells him, laughing as he sweeps her onto the bed.

“Oh, I think you’ll find I’m a very,” he pauses to press a kiss to her breast through the fabric, chuckling low, “good man.”

“No, no!  I had a reason to talk to you!” she gasps, but the fingers she’s curled in his hair tell another story, as does the thigh that’s curled by his ribs.  Bond presses her into the bed and she writhes sinuous as a cat beneath him, laughing and pushing at his shoulders as he tries to distract her.  “I mean it!”

“Oh?”

“Yes!  I wanted—” she tells him, gasping as his hand cups her breast through her gown.  “—this is important!”  He laughs, letting her wrestle him to the bed.  She pins his hands overhead and looks down at him, serious.

“Pavi is a good man,” she tells him incongruously, and he blinks at her, the man she’s put in her wedding bed.  She takes his disbelief as something else, slapping at his chest with one hand.  “He is!  He’s just.  He doesn’t know—”  Here she trails off, clearly searching for words.  “I know why you are here—it’s that stupid video he made, isn’t it?  I knew only bad things would happen from that.”

“Bad things?” Bond asks.

“You must understand that Pavi is...stubborn,” she tells him then, leaning in to rest her head on his chest.  He lets his arm curl around her shoulders.  “At times, he is stupid.  He lets himself get so carried away, makes promises he can’t fulfill.  Did you not suspect—he’s hired your Will to make him the software to do what he has already told people he can do?  He will never—Pavi would never be able to bomb an embassy.  He just,” she says, giving a frustrated sigh.  “Please, don’t hurt him.  Please.”

For a long moment, Bond is silent, mulling the words over in his head.  They match, of course, his initial impression about the case, about the fantastical claims Stanescu had made on the video, but he doesn't—knows he can't confirm or deny having seen it.  He settles, instead, on the bed and watches as Tati coyly opens the buttons on his shirt, leaning in to press lipsticked kisses to his chest.  When she makes it to his navel, she looks back up at him, smile bright and sly.  He raises a brow and she laughs.

 


	6. Chapter 6

He leaves her in the bed sweet with sleep and sated.  He's more determined than ever to protect her now, to shield and keep her safe.  It's clear now how the rest of this will go: he'll find Q and let him know that there's nothing necessary left to do, and as Q begins to wrap up whatever it is he's doing for Stanescu, Bond can contact Powell, make arrangements to sneak Tati out of the country to safety.  Just this once, Bond is sure: no one will die but Stanescu.  There will be no innocent victims.

Q is missing from the room when Bond goes to find him.  Bond’s not worried about that, but he thinks perhaps Rod would be; he stands by the bed to watch the afternoon’s light as it slides across the floor and figures he knows where Q’s gone.

His path back to the atrium is meandering, slow and easy as he takes in the house and what he can see of the compound through the window.  There are guards everywhere; he nods to one as he goes and gets no response for it, but there are others who are not that discreet, others who grin at him as though they are in on his secrets.  He ignores them.

Bond can hear them in the atrium before he can see them: Q and Stanescu sound like they’re the only ones in the room, the guards standing just far enough away that Bond can tuck himself against the wall and listen.

“It’s not,” Q is saying, voice slow and reluctant.  “I’m not actually stupid.  I did,” he pauses, and Bond imagines him taking a bracing sip of his tea.  “I did know.  What kind of distraction she’d prove to him.  She’s beautiful, and Rod likes beautiful things.”

“But he has you,” Stanescu insists.

Q’s laugh is dry, bitterly self-deprecating.  “I didn’t say he was incapable of appreciating things that aren’t.”  Stanescu makes a dismissive sound and Bond remembers they’ve known each other for years.  Perhaps Stanescu thinks fondly of Q; he listens as Q continues.  “I knew, but I trust him.  Pavel, he hasn’t put his hands on your wife.  I promise you.  He was with me all night.”

“I’ve heard you kicked him out this morning,” Stanescu leads.

“Hurt feelings, nothing more.  He came back grovelling; I put him to bed.  He’s still asleep in the room.  You could check if you like,” Q says mildly, and suddenly there is an alibi for Bond’s morning that he hadn’t thought to seek yet, even though he chafes at the thought of grovelling to Q.  He can’t even imagine—

“I hope you put him through hell,” Stanescu says firmly.  “You fight with him until he understands what a horse’s ass he’s been.”

And Bond expects enthusiastic agreement, a line about how much Q intends to make him suffer for his adulterous thoughts and desires.  Instead—“I hate fighting with him, Pavel.  I hate it.”  The vehemence takes Bond’s breath.  “He always knows how to make me feel young, dumb, unprepared.  And lord help me, I can’t help but give it back, until it’s just bickering, catfighting, mean as children on the play yard who haven’t yet learned that fighting with your fists hurts less.”

“He has hurt you?”

“With his words.  I’ve got scars,” Q says, and Bond’s not prepared for the guilt that steals over him at that.  It’s not quite a punch to the solar plexus—he’s lived through that—but it’s got the same feeling, leaves his breath catching and his heart thudding in a pained, familiar way.  “I don’t—please don’t think he’s doing it on purpose,” Q says, and only now does Bond register that he’s heard Stanescu’s chair slide across the floor, now, as Stanescu brings it back cautiously.  “I really don’t.  I don’t tell him that—I’m much too proud.  You know that he can’t be the only problem between us; he’s not the only problem with our relationship.  I think he would.  He’d stop if I weren’t too proud to tell him how deeply it,” he stops, voice thin.  “Hurts.  How much it affects me.  He’s not a cruel man.”

“To me, it sounds different.”

“I’ve seen him before.  With women.”  The confession hangs in the air, heavy and dark.  “I—the ones he has to save, for work.  Sometimes, usually, he fucks them.”  

Bond can hear the stillness inside, the way Stanescu’s gone cold and silent.  “Go on.”

“He’s so sweet with them.  Kind.  The way he touches them and whispers in their ears.”

“He makes you listen!”  Stanescu’s cry is indignant, protective.  Bond’s skin prickles with portent.

“I want to know where he is, keep him safe,” Q protests.  “He wouldn’t, if he knew—but he’s so tender with them.  It’s delicate, his hand on their bodies, and sometimes watching it feels like there’s something swelling inside me, rearranging my bones.”

“That’s hate.”

“It’s not.”  Q’s voice is very small, but it’s all that Bond can hear over the rushing of his own blood in his ears: “He’s the best man I’ve ever known.  He’s handsome and kind, he works so hard to keep his lovers safe, but he’s loyal—he always comes home.  No matter how long he’s been gone and who he’s been gone with, he always comes home, and I want.”  Q is quiet.  “I want to be that home.”

“You give him too much credit,” Stanescu says with a gusty sigh.

All at once, Bond becomes aware of how long he’s been standing in the hall listening.  The guards aren’t looking at him, almost as if he’s become part of the woodwork; he finds he can’t look at them, either.  He raps his knuckles on the door as he steps around it.  Now that he can see the faces that go with the conversation—

Stanescu glowers, an angry thunderstorm of thought caught at his brow, but Q looks.  He’s shrunken, tired-looking, but when Bond steps in he tries for a fond expression.  There’s lunch spread on the table between them, but he finds he’s not hungry.

“Can I speak to you?” Bond asks.  “Will.”  Q nods and follows.

::

Q still feels wounded, scraped raw, when Bond guides him into the bedroom and closes the door behind them.  He hadn't meant to say anything, hadn't known there was so much to say, but when he thinks about it, it begins to slot into place: the hurt feelings, the ache he's been training himself to ignore at Bond's mocking laughter.  Q finds that he can't quite meet Bond's eye as he moves into the room, reaching for his laptop with shaking hands just for something to do with himself.  It's horrifying to think that he might be in—that his attraction to Bond may be more—the man thinks of him as a joke, obviously, and the thought of pining away for him strikes Q as something so ridiculous it pulls an empty chuckle from him.  Bond watches him from a few feet away; Q can feel his eyes.

"I presume you've got more information," Q says, instead of any of the hundreds of things whirling around in his mind. Bond looks grateful for the topic when he nods, and just like that Q knows that they're going to ignore it.  He doesn't actually know what Bond's heard—at least enough to make Q wish he could bury himself under a rock and stay for a decade or so—but they're not going to talk about it, about Q's unrequited crush and the way he can't handle Bond being mean to him without crying over it like a child.  It's the kindest thing Bond's ever done for him, and now that he knows what to look for, the pulling sensation at the bottom of his left rib cage is familiar to Q.

"I did," Bond tells him.  "I—Tati and I—"

"Talked," Q says for him, lips curling.  Of course they had.

"Yes," Bond says carefully.  "She's—Stanescu is an idiot, Q.  A big fish in a small pond, and one who can't keep himself from bragging, making claims he can't follow through on.  He can't do the things he's claimed."

Q's breath is tight in his chest.  "Anything else?"  And oh, he hopes not, because Bond is so wrong, so utterly, completely—

"I want to take Tati with us when we go."  The laugh Bond's words startle out of him is abrupt, sharp-edged.  "We can't leave her here, Q.  He'll kill her for telling me."

"She's perfectly fine where she is, I assure you," Q says, and he can see the moment Bond decides it's jealousy making him say it, can feel the chill in the room.  

"That's a bit cold, isn't it?" Bond asks.  His voice is so deceptively calm.  "You think she'd deserve it?"

"That's not what I'm saying at all!" Q snaps back.  "And I don't know when you think that we're leaving, but it's certainly not any time soon.  At least not until I can figure out who the birds are," he amends, glaring back.

"Who?" Bond asks.  Q can see he's knocked him from the rails, confused him.

"The birds.  Stanescu's source for information."

"Is that important right now?  When he could kill us all whenever he pleases?"

"He always could," Q grinds out.  "I don't know why she would tell you that he couldn't.  It's not true."

"So he has access to the bombs," Bond asks, and his voice is cutting again, sharp.  Q pushes back at the feelings of self-doubt, recognises their source and burns with shame again.  

"Yes."

"And what, he told you this?"

He had.  Q is silent.   

"Because he tells you the truth, the hacker he's trying to impress.  He tells you the truth?"

"He's not trying to—" Q scoffs.

"You must have been some kind of criminal idol, for all these men admire you," Bond says, and it's like razorblades, ice and fire on his skin.  Of course Bond would go for his secrets, he thinks bitterly, and of course he'd mock them, because Q's been so willing to tell him all about being a terrified young man pursued by the government, about the month of prison to show him how much infinitely, infinitely worse it could have been for him.  

"We can't rescue her anyway," he says, and he knows it's petulant but right now he doesn't care.  He wants Bond to feel this same flush of dismay, this same hollow hurt that's digging into his spine.  He feels old, bones hollowed and brittle.  "I'm sorry, Bond."  He is.  The heat of revenge is short lived, and it leaves him aching when it's gone.

"What do you mean?"  Bond's voice is dangerous.  Q touches the laptop case and turns to Bond to explain, but.  Perhaps a visual aid will be better.  He thumbs open the lock and carefully unhooks the protective straps holding in the lid of the laptop, revealing the hollow behind.

Q's never been able to partake in wanton destruction, at least not face-to-face.  He'd always been the sort of child who inevitably broke his toys and cried once it was done; it's where his tinkering comes from.  The guilt....  He's laid out the components one by one, each of them carefully disassembled until what's left of the satellite connection is almost modern art, each piece pristine and separate as though he can assemble it again, as though he hasn't taken pains to crush the vital parts underfoot until there's no way it will ever be functional again, even if all of the parts could be re-engineered.  His earwig is in the hollow, too: casing split, it spills colored wires and tiny parts as if it cannot possibly hold them anymore.

Bond's rage leaves him breathless, Q can tell.  He can see from the corner of his eye as Bond grabs for air, fingers clenching over the rail at the foot of the bed hard enough that Q is sure he'll bend the brass.  "Why?"  He doesn't have an answer that will make Bond happy right now, knows better than to speak, anyway.  "Why the hell would you do this?"

Q is silent as he hides the components again.  They can't be found, he knows; there's no one stupid enough on the compound to be unable to recognise what's happened if they are.  "It was a liability," he says simply, and prays for Bond to understand.

He doesn't.  Of course he doesn't.  Bond stands before Q perplexed, like he cannot possibly fathom why Q would do this thing, and honestly, Q doesn't know what to say.  He's acted without confirmation from his partner, but then when was he supposed to obtain it?  Pop in while Bond was fucking Stanescu's wife and request a brief chat?  But it's nerves chewing in his gut because this time, it's Q that's gone off book, and in the worst possible way . "Bond, I'm sorry."  He just wants Bond to meet his eyes, but when he does....  Q's breath rushes out of him as though he's been struck.

"Have you never, in your life, actually worked with someone as a team?" Bond demands.

"That's not fair!" Q says, and Bond stares at him.   

"And how are we meant to call for backup if something goes wrong?" Bond presses him.  There's a lump in Q's throat now, growing.  " I realise that this isn't something that you typically consider—"

And Q's had quite enough.  "I am your backup, you incomprehensible ass," he hisses.  "How dare you imply that I don't understand your missions when I've sat listening to them every time you've gone further than the corner shop for a packet of fags!  How dare you?  And each time, I've listened as you did exactly what you were told not to do—as you put the mission and your teammates and national bloody security to the side in order to do what you thought was best.  And more fool me, I thought you wouldn't do it this time.  I thought, 'Oh, he wouldn't dare risk my life, wouldn't dare put us both in an incredibly precarious position just to prove a bloody point’—and the same bloody point you feel you have to prove every time: that nothing can get you, because you're James Fucking Bond!"  

"Well," Bond says stiffly.  "I must apologise for your frustrations."

"And then you treat me like I'm a bloody child, an incompetent, a fool, and I'm supposed to sit by and listen to you get yourself killed someday, all because you can't be arsed to listen to me.  And like Hell—oh, who thought this whole disaster was a good idea?"  Curling his hands in his hair in frustration, Q bites back the scream that's lingering just behind his lips.  Bond is silent; when he looks up, Bond looks stunned, eyes wide and lips pale.  Q plays the conversation over in his head and winces.

"Do you really think we need to save her?" Q asks finally, glancing away from Bond at the floor.  He can feel himself blushing as he tries to hide, to shove the messy emotions back inside his shell until he's smooth and plastic again.

"I.  Yes, I do," Bond tells him.  And really, that's all Q needs.  He waves a hand at the door genially.

"Go, then.  Tell her we'll rescue her."

"And the birds?" Bond asks carefully.

"We'll ignore them for now.  Go."

The door is quiet when Bond closes it behind himself, and for the first time in a long time it feels like an apology.

::

He's still thinking when he finds her, his mind spinning in circles to stop at the same points: Q wasn't lying to Stanescu.  Q doesn't want him to die.  Q destroyed the satellite link.  His mind restarts: Q feels inadequate when he argues with Bond.  Q wants to protect him.  Q destroyed the satellite link.  Again: Q feels—Q likes—Q destroyed the satellite link.  Again—

"Such a serious face."  And he's starting to wonder if Tati has any way of speaking that doesn't sound like teasing, her eternal pout and pouting lips and playful eyes.  He forces a grin for her.

"Just the lady I was hoping to see," he tells her honestly, and she smiles slowly, already reaching to stroke one narrow hand along his chest. "Tati, precious Tati," he tells her, sinking into her embrace with his lips at her wrist.  "I want a minute alone with you."

"All the minutes in the day are yours," she tells him, and when she turns to guide him down the hall, he can see the shape of her body, the thick of her thighs and sweet luscious curve of her arse through her skirt.  He wraps his palm around her waist and she laughs, tugging him to the wall to kiss her.  

She's got her hand inside his trousers when he stops her, grips her wrist to drag it up and kiss at her musky fingers.  She moans, reaching for him again.  Her mouth is wax-sticky with lipstick when he kisses her again, and she laughs when he stops himself, wiping away the evidence with his handkerchief.  "I needed to talk to you," he tells her now, while his mind can still focus, and she laughs again, pressing his hands to her arse before sliding her body along his.

"Tell me anything," she pleads.  "Anything, only don't stop while you're doing it."  

"I'm serious, Tati.  This is serious."

"So serious," she agrees, but her mouth is tucked down into a ridiculous frown, her tone teasing again.  "So serious!"

"Damnit," he growls, and he can't help the way his fingers dig into her arms in frustration.  She makes a soft sound of pain.  "Will you listen to me?"

"You're hurting me," she protests, struggling in his arms until he kisses her, hard.  She bites him.  

"Tati, please."

"So say what's so serious," she commands dismissively, and he frowns.

"Tati."

"Say!  Say, say.  You want to talk."  She's obviously put out, but there's something strange in her body posture, something tense and thin and wavering.

"Tati, I want—"  He's not sure how to broach the topic.  Usually by this point, the girls are asking to be rescued or else there's no other option; he's only rarely had to offer a hand to anyone, and he can't for the life of him fathom how to go about it this time.  

"And you can have it, Rod," she tells him, eyes going hooded.  Her burned caramel voice is back, seductive and charming and entirely false.

"James."

"James, then," she corrects, and her arms come up like an octopus, wrapping him close and intimate; from this close he can smell her perfume and the heat of her skin.

"Have you ever," he asks against the lobe of her ear, nuzzling at the diamond drops she wears until he can rub at her with his nose, "thought about leaving?"

"Leaving?" she asks, confused.  "And go where?  Pavi takes me anywhere I could ever want to go.  All I have to do is ask."

"Without your husband," he clarifies, leaning in to nudge her again.

Her hand is like a steel plate against his chest; she locks her elbow and when he looks at her from the length of her arm, she's staring at him as if he's spoken Chinese.  Suddenly, she laughs.

"To England?" she asks.  He nods, confused.  She laughs again.

"Like the girls from the stories," she asks, and his confusion must show—"The stories Pavi bought me.  Always, he is looking to keep me entertained; I thought at first you were a joke he was playing on me.  You acted too much like the stories."

"Stories?" he asks.

"Yes," she repeats as if speaking to a particularly slow child.  "Like Skyfall."

She's still talking, but he's gone numb, unable to process, unable to think.  There's buzzing in his ears, a thin, high humming like mosquitoes, and she finally takes in his expression, takes pity on him.  "Your boy, he leaves secrets out like crumbs.  Attracts cockroaches."  She smiles.  "Pavi was so happy to meet him, though.  I was glad for that.  Pavi takes such good care of me; I want him to be happy."

"Happy," Bond echoes distantly.

"So you understand why I can't go to England, yes?  Because it would break my Pavi's heart."

"But—"

"Oh, sex," she says flippantly, laughing.  "My Pavi, he's always so busy.  He never has time for it.  I try so hard to be a good girl," she tells him, then winks salaciously, "but I don't always succeed.  The boys, they come and go, but my Pavi, he stays."

He feels lightheaded.  Q had said—he slips from her grip, the hand on his chest, stepping back from her carefully until he can take her in, from her perfectly styled hair to the designer shoes on her feet.  She doesn't look unhappy.  She doesn't sound like she's lying.  

"You'll keep my secrets, won't you?" she asks coyly, tipping her head.  "Of course you will.  James Bond is a discreet lover.  A gentleman."

He thinks of the black widow chain of bodies that has followed her for years, men killed by her jealous, doting, loving husband.  He thinks of Q sitting in the bed waiting for him to bring her back before he will escape.  His earwig doesn't work—with Q's in a thousand pieces hidden away, there's nothing for it to connect to.  He runs.

::

In retrospect, he'll think that perhaps he should have seen it coming.  He's up to his elbows in Stanescu's system when they burst in, men armed to the teeth and Stanescu himself like a general behind.  He looks at Q.  Q looks at him.  He considers closing his laptop slowly, but really, what's the point?  Is the situation any less dangerous if Stanescu doesn't know that Q is digging into his secured server, backing copies and duplicates onto his laptop as quickly as the thing can write them?  Instead, he pushes it aside.

"Can I help you?"  And he's a little bit proud that his voice doesn't waver.  Stanescu looks at him with pity.

"Such a waste of talent," Stanescu tuts, and Q understands—he understands.

"Have you seen Rod?  He went on a walk a half hour ago.  He ought to be back soon."

"Yes."  

"Yes, he should, or...?"  He shouldn't antagonise the man, he knows.  He also knows that if he can drag this out, distract him long enough, Bond will come to save him, just the way he always rushes to save the girls on his missions, except.  Except Bond doesn't always save them.  Except sometimes Bond is too late.  Except Bond may be busy, may be tupping Tatiana in one of the dozens of bedrooms in the house, may be enjoying himself without a thought for the weedy little boffin he's left to himself.  It's stupid and it's self-pitying to think so, and Q still can't help the wave of dark despair that strokes him like a cat until he's nearly paralyzed with fear.  

"I think we both know where he is, Will.  What he's doing."  A pained look crosses Stanescu's face.  "Who he's—"  He can't bring himself to finish it, and for a brief flash Q feels sorry for him, sorry that he's brought James Bond to his house and to his wife.  It passes; one of Stanescu's guards lifts his rifle.

"Pavel—"

"Don't.  Don't bother, Will. I know you have no control over him.  He's as badly behaved as my Tati, but you see the difference, don't you?  The difference where I have a gun.  I have many guns.  And guns are good for solving problems like your Rod."

"And here I was considering aversion therapy," Q cracks, unable to help himself.  Stanescu smiles, eyes squinted with amusement.

"You know, that's what I like about you, Will: you've always had a sense of humour.  So British, with your stiff upper lip.  It's admirable."

"Thank you."

"Too bad you can't teach your man to be a proper gentleman like you.  To restrain his desires.  I imagine he won't last very long without learning that," Stanescu tells him, and something about the way he phrases it sends distress signals through Q's skin, lifting the tiny hairs along his arms and bringing up gooseflesh all over his body.

"He's made it this far," Q says.  "But you're right: a little prudence—"

"You aren't angry with him?" Stanescu asks.

Q shrugs.  "He is who he is.  I've always thought he'd die for it.  Seems a bit inevitable, don't you think?"

Stanescu pauses, then leans forward.  His fingers are gentle, almost affectionate through Q's hair.  He doesn't pull, just tips Q's head back until their eyes meet.  In his lap, the computer declares its copy done; in the distance, still too far away to hear, he knows Stanescu's network is collapsing, hard drives failing, memory corrupting, motherboards melting.  Stanescu doesn't know this yet as he pets Q's hair.   "Did you think he was the one that was going to die here today?"

 


	7. Chapter 7

No one stops Bond as he bursts into the room.  Stanescu's grip tightens, and Q can feel his hair being pulled, the pinching sensation of hairs coming out before Stanescu manages to sink his fingers in and grab a good hold.  He can't help the whine that escapes, and Stanescu tuts at him quietly.  Q falls silent.

"How glad I am to see you again, Mr. Sterling.  Well, glad to see you now—not so glad to see you before in my wife's bed with your, ah," he searches for the word in English, "cock.  With your cock in her mouth.  You did that; you put your cock in her mouth."  He casts an apologetic glance at Q.  "He did it.  I'm sorry."

"He's the one who should apologise," Q tries, but Stanescu shakes his head.

"Apologies.  Words, they mean nothing when it is actions that make a man.  What a man does means so much more than what he talks about doing, don't you agree?"

"Absolutely," Q tries again, but the look Stanescu shoots him says he's growing tired of his cheek.  So does the backhand that throws him to the floor beside the bed; he hears Bond's aborted yell and doesn't bother struggling as Stanescu hauls him back to his feet and shoves him down onto the bed.  It throws him off, and for half a thought he imagines a different kind of punishment, scrambling up the length of the bed to press his back to the headboard beneath Stanescu's watchful gaze.  

"Pretty," Stanescu says, and a fine tremor sets up in Q's knee as he drags it in front of himself, ready to kick, but Stanescu doesn't move any closer, just watches him on the bed.  "Very pretty.  I don't like boys, you see, but I can appreciate—look, those eyelashes.  He's pretty, isn't he, Mr. Sterling?"

"Yes."  Bond sounds as though he's been chewing gravel.  Q notices for the first time that Tatiana isn't with him.

"Soft?" Stanescu asks.  Q's stomach roils.  "I think he must make pretty noises when he's underneath you."

"Get to the point," Bond snaps.

"Then why," Stanescu continues as if Bond hasn't spoken.  "Then why do you go looking for someone else?  Hm?  Someone who does not belong to you, someone who belongs to me?  Why do you seek to ruin a thing that is not yours, to touch her until I cannot help but imagine that when I kiss her, when I kiss my beautiful wife on the mouth, it is your cock I taste?"  He's fully shouting now, and Q considers a smart remark to drain the tension, but it feels like one of his teeth is loose and he's not really interested in losing another.

"Pavel," he tries again.

"Shut up!"  Stanescu doesn't hit him again, but it's a near thing; when he sees Q's flinch, he softens.  "It's hard for you, too.  I forget that.  It is, isn't it?  Your man, I think you love him quite a lot and he doesn't respect you and you don't deserve to die because of him, but you will."

It knocks the breath from Q's lungs and he can feel his lip trembling.  

"Do you love him?" Stanescu asks, and for one horrifying moment Q thinks that he's asking him.  His lips part; he doesn't know what to say. "Mr. Sterling," Stanescu asks pointedly, tipping his chin in Q's direction.  "Do you love him?"

Bond hesitates.  His eyes meet Q's and he's scared, he looks so scared for Q that some teenaged part of his brain feels smug pleasure in it.  "Yes," says Bond finally.  Q can almost pretend that it's Rod Sterling talking. Stanescu takes him in, slowly measuring.  Finally, he says, "I think you're telling the truth.  I do.  I see you look at him sometimes like he is the only man in the room; I believe you love him."  And Q could laugh at that, short and bitter, but Stanescu waves his hand, gestures to where Q sits on the bed.  "I'm not a cruel man.  You can kiss him, make him feel like he is the only man in the room again, one last time."

Do something, Q wills silently, and if ever all his childhood practice at telepathy were to pay off, now would be the time.  Instead, Bond stays still, lets the armed men take his gun and pat him down for weapons.  They're thorough, taking even the blade strapped on the inside of Bond's ankle, and the entire time Bond is watching him.  "Well?" Stanescu asks.  "What are you waiting for?"

Bond starts forward, followed by two of the armed men.  When he reaches the side of the bed, he casts Stanescu a look that Q's sure is meant to promise painful, senseless death, but more than anything it telegraphs just how helpless they both are; when Bond clambers onto the bed with him, he lets himself wrap his arms around Bond's neck and presses his forehead in tight to Bond's.

Bond's breathing is unsteady, shaking with rage and fear and impotent frustration.  Stanescu lets them be for the moment, but he never fades to the side completely; it's close enough to hear Q's startled murmur when Bond sweeps his nose down the line of Q's own to brush his lips against his.  Q could be embarrassed by the sound he makes, but he's probably going to die, so.  

Bond's mouth is dry, and when he really looks for it, he can still smell Tatiana's perfume on his hair, but it's not passionless.  It's the saddest kiss he's ever had, and that includes the one he'd shared with Michael when they were breaking up and the both of them were crying.  The thoughts makes him laugh weakly against Bond's mouth and Bond presses forward, leans him back into the bed.  And yes, this is the moment he's been idly fantasizing about since they arrived in Chisinau, only he never imagined there'd be a gun forcing Bond to do it.  

As far as last moments go, kissing James Bond probably isn't the worst.  Bond's hand slides up to brush his ribs and clearly Stanescu's not interested in watching them make out before he shoots someone.  All too soon, Q finds Bond being pulled back, his lips and eyes dark.  Q closes his eyes and swallows.  

The problem with Stanescu is that he makes the classic supervillain mistake, the same mistake all the villains in Q's life have ever made: he underestimates the sheer levels of stupid to which Q is prepared to sink in order to win.  And really, what else has Q got to lose?  Stanescu makes an undignified yelping sound as Q dives at him, feeling his collarbone strike Stanescu's ribs as they go down.  There's a fizzing pop and a spark of pain in his hand that's so sharp he knows he's going to have second-degree burns across the back, and his glasses are ruined but it doesn't matter because Pavel Stanescu is dead, electrocuted by the short-range weaponry no one ever expects Q to have.  

He can't see into the room, but he hears Bond taking down the other men just as he'd hoped he would; a fuzzy, Bond-shaped figure looms over him and for a moment Q considers lashing out, but Bond's hands are firm on his shoulders, and Bond leans in close enough to kiss so Q can recognise those ice chip eyes.

"Don't tell me that was your only pair," Bond says.  When Q doesn't say anything, he chuckles dryly.  "Of course it was.  Stay close to me."

"Because wandering off is such a great idea," Q snips, but it's hard to be catty when he's this relieved. He grabs the laptop and slings it on, and when he's done he notices: Bond's hand is warm and dry when he wraps his fingers around it, and Bond tugs him along behind himself as they step out into the hall.  

"Why would you weaponise your glasses, is the question," Bond wonders idly as they're dashing through the halls, and Q can barely contain the bubble of laughter that feels caught between his ribs, just below the skin and pressing painfully in a lump.

"I got bored?" he asks, and Bond laughs.  He's just beginning to wonder why they're not being followed when Bond leads him outside; he hears the first gunshots pinging on the gravel drive around them just as Tatiana's voice lifts in a high, lilting wail from inside the house.  Guilt pricks at him, but he can't linger; Bond drags him over to a familiar looking building and—"Oh, no.  No, no, Bond, you can't.  You can't—Bond."  He's aware that he's babbling, begging, even, but this is clearly an aircraft hangar, and even though he can't see the details of Bond's face, he can sense he's running out of Bond's good will.

"I thought you weren't afraid of flying.  You handled it well enough last time," Bond tells him, and really, Q could be amused that Bond bought it—

"Did you have any idea how huge the dosage was on those tranquilisers I took?  I couldn't feel my eyebrows," Q deadpans.

"No one can feel their eyebrows, Q," Bond tells him.

"I couldn't feel anything below them, either.  Bond, please, you can't—I don't—it won't end well.  It just won't."

"And what is your solution, Q?" Bond snaps back, and Q knows he's worn out his welcome.   "Do we wait for a taxi to take us back to England?  Do you have a car in your pocket?"

Bond's right.  He knows this, intellectually at least, but it doesn't stop the way his heart is hammering in his chest. It's a good little plane they find inside the hangar, small enough for a single pilot and a small group of passengers, and Q thinks for a moment he's going to vomit where he stands.  He cannot complain any longer, will not complain any longer, and he lets Bond shuttle him aboard feeling like a marionette, lets Bond buckle him into a seat and watches as the blur of him secures the laptop before sitting in the pilot's seat.  There are bullets nearby again, and for one dizzy moment, Q almost considers throwing himself onto the concrete to their mercy.  He can't breathe.

He can't breathe.  He opens his mouth to tell Bond, but they're back to where they started, aren't they?  Only Bond has the new ammunition of his poor broken heart and Q can't bring himself to give him more.  The engines start and Q goes over his mantra that's always got him through flights before he learned of the wonders of modern medicine: there is a science behind all of this.  Aeroplanes are among the safest forms of transportation, each element of them carefully tried and tested and checked—except Bond hadn't been able to follow a pre-flight checklist, and Q can feel his airways swelling up, can feel the moment he begins to hyperventilate.  The tears have started already, and his mouth is a bloody mess as he bites back the sounds trying to escape, because he can't.  He can't.  The plane jerks to life beneath him, and it takes everything he has not to scream.

Q can hear his own ragged breaths, can feel the iron band of a panic attack cinching tighter around his chest.  He thinks longingly of the little pink pills still in the nightstand and he could cry for wanting them, but there's nothing for it; he can't ask Bond to pop off to Boots for more, and he doubts his nerves would survive another takeoff and landing, anyway.  He tries to laugh and it comes out as a sob.  He shuts his eyes tight against the shaking of the cabin, the way the tarmac is racing underneath them in the windows, the sensation of being pressed forcefully into the seat under him—his gut clenches as he can feel the ground falling away from beneath them as the plane steps into the air.  It's the worst, the absolute worst part of flying, and nausea curls its clammy hands around him and squeezes hard.  It feels like hours since he first boarded the plane, even though the more sensible parts of his brain tell him it's been fewer than twenty minutes, that Bond has done a remarkable job protecting them and getting them out of danger, no matter what his rabbit-quick heart is telling him.

He still can't breathe, his wheezing rasps caught in his chest before they can pull the cool, recycled air into his lungs, and his vision is beginning to grey at the edges, tunneling distant and blurry.  He recognises the symptoms—he's going to—  

::

Watching Q's panic attack is horrifying.  Bond hasn’t felt this helpless in a very long time; it's a feeling like actual hands trying to pull him into the cabin to comfort him, but until the plane is stable, there's nothing he can do but listen, glancing over his shoulder as Q falls silent.  The moment he's high enough and the plane is steady, Bond can feel the automated systems kick in—a rich man like Stanescu isn't going to fly his own planes, of course—and ducks back.  Q is pale, limp and sweaty and disoriented, barely able to hold himself together, but he flinches when Bond touches his brow.  If he were a different man, Bond would soothe him, perhaps make clucking noises of comfort, but he's unsure, brushing his fingertips through Q's hair.

And James Bond has never been the very best at making decisions for other people; he's always fucked them up somehow.  He has only to look at the last few days to see how true that is.  Q is wan, eyes unfocused, and seeing him like this is almost a physical pain.   

He has to leave him in order to fly, but he can't help looking back every few minutes, checking for improvement and finding none.  Once again, Bond finds himself about to make a decision that will impact the mission, and he does it without a second thought.

It's hours later when Q finally comes back to himself, rocked by the sway and sigh of the carriage.  He's been awake from time to time, never fully present, but now the lights are finally on fully; he's muzzy, obviously still off, and Bond slows the gentle comb of fingers through his dark curls.  He doesn't know why he's feeling delicate, himself, but he is; when Q draws away, he tucks his fingers into his palms and watches him closely.

"Are you feeling any better?" Bond asks steadily.

"Still a bit queasy," Q admits.  He looks so steady sitting on the berth in the small private carriage, and Bond feels irrationally proud of him, his own emotions tangled and confused.  All he can think about is the boneless slump he'd found Q in when he'd landed the plane, the heavy pliability of him as he'd maneuvered him into the taxi, the way his head had bounced on the pillow when Bond finally got him into the berth with the porter looking on in concern. They've got nothing but Q's laptop and their passports, but Bond hadn't given a damn about looking suspicious as he carried Q in, settling his long limbs awkwardly on the narrow cot before pacing the carriage.  They're on their way home.  

"I think I may be able to find a cuppa for you, if you'll wait here," Bond tells him, and for the first time Q seems to recognise where they are, or at least where they aren't—

"The plane?  Did something happen?"

Yes, Bond thinks.  You scared me half to death.  He remembers teasing, remembers outright taunting Q for his weakness  and cringes.  "You turned white as paper and fainted," he tells Q brusquely, and he can see the minute the statement hits Q's ear wrong.  Q shrinks, starts to curl away from him on the berth, and Bond continues, trying to gentle his words: "It wasn't worth it to keep going that way.  Your health wasn't worth it."

Q looks at him as though he's grown a second head, a yip of doubting laughter escaping.  "Go on, pull the other one."  Bond's pretty sure he deserves that one—he thinks of Q: "I hate fighting with him.  I hate it."—but it grates nonetheless .  Q touches the back of his hand to his lips, wincing.  "I can't see shit."

And Bond is wrong-footed, unsure.  Where normally he'd tease—"That's the result of sitting too close to the computer screen, Quartermaster."—he doesn't know how, doesn't trust himself.  He's gone too far too many times without feeling the line as he crossed it, and he doesn't want, honestly doesn't want to argue or make Q upset.  His silence seems to unnerve Q, who begins kicking his legs over the edge of the bed.

"Tea, you said?" Q asks, and they're British—this is common ground.

"You stay here," Bond tells him gruffly before sidling out of the room to retrieve it from the dining car.  When he returns, two steaming paper cups in hand, Q is gazing thoughtfully out the window.

"Thank you," Q says, subdued.  He clutches the cup and Bond wonders what Q can see through the window, exactly how bad his eyesight is without the glasses that saved their lives.  He doesn't realise he's staring until Q lifts a sardonic eyebrow over the rim of his cup, mouth quirking at the corner.  "You don't have to be nice to me, Bond.  Not because—I'd rather you didn't, actually, and we can go back to hating each other as always.  I don't know what to make of you when you're not being an arsehole to me."

It's humbling, just a bit.  "I did want to apologise," Bond tells him reluctantly.  Honestly, he doesn't—he wants nothing more than to brush it all under the rug, to go back to the easy relationship that he's only realizing now they never had— but at the same time he can't bear the thought of things staying the same, the both of them casually and mindlessly digging their thumbs into each other's bruises as if it doesn't matter what pain they're causing.  "I never meant to make you feel—" and he pauses to sip the scalding tea, fishing for time and words alike.  What?  Unappreciated?  He can't say that's true, knows that the goal of at least a few of the barbs he's slung in Q's direction were intended to disarm him, to draw into question Q's competency and capability, to hurt him where he'd feel it most: his professionalism.  "It was unprofessional of me."

"Water under the bridge," Q tells him, and it's so breathtakingly easy that Bond catches himself:

"Water pistols, you mean?"

"Ah, but that would be telling.  I like to think of my armament meetings as surprise parties: you never quite know which gifts to expect."  Q's smiling almost bashfully around the edge of his cup, and Bond realises he could have had this, instead of months of cruel jibes.  He sighs, lifting himself onto the cot with Q.

"You'll break it," Q warns when it groans beneath their combined weight.

"I'm sure arses fatter than mine have sat here before," Bond says.  "How're you feeling?"

"Better, thanks."

"Good."  It's not quite comfortable silence, but for once it doesn't carry the weight of wounded feelings between them, and Bond can't help but consider that a positive thing.

"Where are we going?" Q asks suddenly, startling a surprised laugh out of Bond.

"Home, of course.  Vauxhall.  London, England, Earth."

"Doctor Who," Q comments idly and Bond grins.  "Have you been in touch with Powell?"

"Not since the," Bond says, making a vague hand gesture that's supposed to somehow refer to the device Q'd destroyed without reminding him of Bond scolding him like a child for doing it.  It's amazing how some things in hindsight are capable of making him cringe.

Q nods.  "Good.  We can't go back to London just yet."

"What?  Why not?"

"The birds," Q says, and Bond remembers.  "The calls are coming from inside the house," Q intones, and his fingers are drumming on his thigh impatiently.  His colour's returned, and Bond feels silly about how proud he is to have returned Q to operational status.  There are burns on his hands—they look like electrical burns.  Bond has a dizzying moment of recollection, the sight of Q slamming into Stanescu all flailing limbs and knobbly elbows.  He'd like to take care of them soon, though Q looks much improved.  

"Beg pardon?"

"Our birds.  They're MI:6."

::

The train powers through the night, scrolling by sleepy storybook towns and punching through the Carpathian Mountains before emerging in Bucharest early the next morning.  Normally, they would transfer here, make their way through Germany to France and across the chunnel, a three hour flight stretched to the better part of a day by train, and as Q hefts his laptop behind Bond, he deliberately doesn't let himself dwell on it.  Bond has been.  He doesn't know; it makes him nervous to be around a Bond who minds his words so carefully and watches to make sure he hasn't offended.  It's almost enough to make Q believe in pod people, honestly.  Bond throws him a glance to make sure he's following, and Q's torn between huffy irritation at being coddled and the pleased flush that threatens to spill over his cheeks at Bond's concern.  It's certainly not good for his problem.  Bond's called a cab and is waiting for him by the curb when he catches up, addresses the driver in fluent Romanian, and doesn't flinch when his thigh brushes Q's own as they slide into the back seat.

"Where are we going?" Q asks.

"I know of a place here in the city; they're very discreet, don't mind the occasional British businessman, and make the best coffee in Romania."

 


	8. Chapter 8

As it turns out, when Bond says discreet, he means impossible to find.  They pass a dozen brightly-lit hotels, each more ostentatious than the last, but the black iron gate when the taxi finally rolls to a stop is as close to polar opposite from the luxe hotels they've passed as it can be while still being in the same city.  Bond leads him to the front desk of the darkly paneled building, and the girl at the counter lights up to see him again.  "Mr.—!"

Bond stops her with a hand, smiling.  "Sterling, if you will, this time.   

"Of course, Mr. Sterling," she parrots obediently, without even the trace of a question.    Q marvels at the interaction, tries not to gawk, even, and it's a matter of minutes before she's pressing a metal key into Bond's hand.    He's rusty on his conversion from leu to pounds, but he's fairly certain she's lopped off a significant chunk of the price, though she winks at him when he moves to follow Bond up the narrow, twisting stairs to their room.  

The size of the room is, frankly, daunting—Q could probably fit his entire flat at home into the space—and it's full of furniture: chairs paired intimately around a table, a sitting area with enormous plush furniture covered in leather that looks like it would feel like melted butter, a tremendous leaded window at the back of the room to look over the alley and the tiny attempt at a garden behind the building, and—Q laughs.  There are two beds, pushed close enough that they may as well be one.

"Tired of sleeping on the couch?" he asks.  Bond's grin is unrepentant.

"Don't make fun of me; I'm an old man.  My back's not meant to be kipping on sofas like a teenager anymore."

And yes, it's a dig at his age, but it feels gentle, tentative.  Q smiles back in Bond's general direction and is surprised when Bond reaches for him, pressing his thumb into the wrinkles in his brow.  

"We need to get you a new pair of glasses," Bond says.  The heat and press of his thumb against Q's skin gently brings his attention to the headache that's been forming behind his eyes, the strain of trying to make shapes in the vague blur of the room resolving with a clarity that he knows is going to feel like a bruise later.  

He closes his eyes and Bond keeps rubbing, the tension falling away in sheaves until the muscles around his eyes feel lax and loose. "Okay."

Bond places a call on the hotel phone and the hotel must be more full-service than he's suspected because it's only a few hours later that a new pair of replacement glasses arrive.  The frames are thick black plastic, walking the line between trendy and hopelessly hideous with a kind of precarious balance, but the world filters into definition again for the first time in nearly twenty four hours, so Q can't complain too much.  Then there's clothes, a change of outfits for each of them, and Bond disappears into the en suite where Q can hear the water running.  

Q's dithering about on the laptop, poking through Stanescu's files when the thought occurs to him—"Do you think your remarkable concierge service will be willing to deliver dinner?" he calls, curious.

It's a few minutes before Bond responds, "Yes?"  He's coming from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, another slung over his shoulders.  "You bellowed?"

"Dinner.  D'you think they'll deliver?  It's only I don't really want to go anywhere.  I'm still feeling a little dead on my feet."

"Marie's got a kitchen downstairs.  We'll order up to the room, then." Bond tells him, rubbing the towel briskly over his hair.

"You'd better have left a towel for me," Q grouses mildly.  "I'm all over grimy from our desperate flight from Moldova.  I feel like I've sweated through these clothes at least once."  

"Shower, then.  Everything'll be ready when you're done."

Bond holds true to his word, and the hotel's miracle staff holds true to Q's first impression; when he comes out of the bathroom, refreshed and skin still steaming from the heat of his shower, there's a meal spread across one of the dining tables from edge to edge and nowhere to put his elbows.  "I was thinking I was a bit peckish, Bond, not getting ready to hibernate through winter.  Good god, man."

Bond chuckles, guiding Q into a seat before pulling up his own chair.

"You told a Romanian grandmother you were hungry.  Marie saw you when we checked in—she'll be damned if you starve to death on her doorstep."

"I'll have you know I eat ravenously," Q tells him loftily, and he can feel the toothy grin that stretches across his face until he realises: he's flirting.  He glances at Bond out of the corner of his eye, sobered, but Bond doesn't appear to have noticed, already tracing his spoon through the bowl of soup in front of him. The first burst of flavour hits his tongue like an explosion and he tucks in, only now realizing he hasn't eaten since that disastrous lunch at Stanescu's.  It helps that the food is wonderful; he's scraping the last of the tomato sauce from his plate with a happy sigh when he realises Bond has stopped and is watching him with curious eyes.

"You've hidden it under the table, haven't you?" Bond asks, and Q laughs.

"No one will ever believe you, Bond.  My secret is safe for now."

"What secret?  That you're a plague of locusts wrapped in the skin of a human man?"

"Tanner used to scold me," Q confides, pursing his lips.  "Always reminding me that I need to eat, need to hydrate.  That milk and sugar do not make tea into a full meal.  Then he offered to take me to dinner to make sure I was eating at least one actual meal that week.  His words—not mine."

"The poor sod.  Did he take out a personal loan first?"

"I think he washes dishes for the restaurant on alternate Sundays."  Bond's laugh at that is thick and sweet and dark as coffee.

He ought to be working, but dinner was so lovely and this easiness with Bond has been so nice; there'd been a bottle of something sharp and sweet and stinging with dinner, strong enough to take the paint off the walls and certainly enough to leave him pleasantly humming. The question slips out before he can stop it, really:  "So why do you hate me so much, Bond?"

Bond looks taken aback by it, himself a bit looser from the drink and visibly relaxed in his chair.  He starts to answer, then sinks back, clearly thinking.

"You think I'm obsolete," he says finally.  Q blinks at him.

"You think so?"

"You've referred to me as a dinosaur in the field before," Bond says, and Q flushes.

"You called me 'wunderkind', like some particularly precocious child who can't stop meddling with the grownups' affairs because he thinks he's smart enough to contribute."

Bond tips his head in acknowledgement.  "You mock my techniques in the field."

"We are literally on the run from a woman you fucked for the mission," Q tells him sternly, but instead of getting angry, Bond laughs, tipping his head again.  "You have a tremendous close rate.  I joke that I could send you into the field armed with a water pistol and a bag of elastics, but the truth is, you could probably still close a case with that, so it really doesn't hold any weight," Q tells him.  Bond seems to recognise the compliment in it, and something about the smile he gives him makes Q feel fuzzy all the way to his toes.

"And I know that your advice is good, really.  Even when it's things I don't want to hear," Bond tells him in return.

"You don't follow it, though," Q reminds him, and Christ, is he really going to do this?  They're nearly three quarters of the way through the bottle of spirit and Q doubts Bond's drunk enough to put up with Q's ham-fisted attempts at flirting, and he's straight, besides, but Q can't stop the familiar smile that slips into the corner of his mouth, can't hide the appreciative brush of his gaze over Bond's shoulders, chest.   There's something so unspeakably gorgeous about the way Bond's eyes turn up as he laughs, crinkling at the edges around a smile so open and Q is smitten, smitten.  He presses the urge to kiss him under another drink.  "Did Marie send us her window cleaner?" he wonders aloud, though honestly the burn of liquor is smooth and flavourful.

Bond tuts disapprovingly.  "It's a symbol of Romanian hospitality, Q.  They're not satisfied until their guests are halfway to crawling on the floor."

"Well, I'm nearly there already.  Goodness, but this isn't a Pimms cup, is it?"

"You're a dainty drinker, aren't you?" Bond asks, laughing.  "Marie makes this stuff in the basement."

"Where she can test its efficacy by watching it dissolve through the floor boards, no doubt," Q agrees readily enough.  "It's delicious."

"Damn right."

"You must be dreadfully bored here with me, though—no women to seduce."

A flash of hurt crosses Bond's face, and Q's ashamed to have brought that old animosity into this soft thing they're forming.  "I mean," he clarifies, "I know I'm pretty, but I'd imagine most men would prefer slightly larger breasts on a drinking partner."  Bond peers at him, curious, and he can't seem to keep his mouth shut today as he adds, "Mine are the tiniest.  Well, not a girl, though, so—"

"You're completely pissed, aren't you?" Bond asks, and honestly thank Christ he's interrupted Q's train of thought, because if he'd continued on with some sort of breast envy, he'd have had to shoot himself when he was sober.  

Instead, he turns moonish eyes to Bond and watches Bond laughing at him.  "S'not funny, Bond.  At least half of the men I've ever been interested in would have been exponentially more interested in me, had I had tits."

"I rather think that's not the part they were missing most," Bond posits, and Q stops to think.

"But I like my cock.  I like them in general, but mine's pretty nice.  I think so."

Bond grins.  "I'm going to have to make sure you don't swallow your tongue tonight, aren't I?" he asks, and Q's not drunk enough to let out the comment about swallowing Bond's instead—or the secondary joke behind it about swallowing something else—but he can't hold in the undignified snort  that comes with these thoughts.  "M's going to kill me—I got the Quartermaster blasted."

"The Quartermaster got himself blasted, ta," Q says primly, pretending at wounded feelings when Bond pulls the bottle away, closing it and sliding it out of reach.  He wants to lie down, anyway, but when he stands, the room takes a dizzy dip that leaves him bracing his fingertips on the edge of the table while he waits for the movement to subside.  Bond's at his elbow, chivvying him to the bed, and when he lays down, Bond does, too, the beds so close their hands are brushing between them.  "How did we end up hating each other?" Q wonders aloud.  "All I ever wanted was to impress you."

Bond wets his lips, and Q's eyes track the movement.  "It just seemed easier, I think.  I always knew what to expect from you that way."

"I'm not so difficult to figure out," Q tells him, smiling.

"No poker face at all," Bond agrees.  He touches Q's hand deliberately, focused on the brush of skin as the backs of their hands bump in the scant inches between the beds, and before Q's quite sure what he's doing—though he's certain that it's a bad idea and equally certain that he wants this more than he's wanted most things in his life—Q's crawling onto the narrow mattress on Bond's side, straddling him with knees on either side of his hips.

"None at all," Q confirms.  "Always worn my desires on my sleeve."

It's the first kiss between them that Q's controlled, and he lets himself take all the things he enjoys; his fingers cup Bond's jaw as he lips at Bond's mouth before latching onto his bottom lip for lingering, sucking kisses.  Bond lets him, and Q has a passing thought that sober Q might want to kick drunk Q's arse for this, but then Bond's moving beneath him, and closer—he's not running away.

To the contrary, actually; Bond shifts his weight and Q falls between his thighs until they're touching from knee to chest, and then his hands are on Q's arse and he's kissing back.  It's hot enough to melt his bones as he sinks into Bond's body.  Bond is a filthy kisser, his mouth hot and wet with the taste of plums and alcohol, body moving rhythmicly until Q can feel his cock hard between them and draws back, awkward.

"I—" he starts, but when is he ever going to get this chance again?  Bond looks up at him with concern, but his pupils are huge and liquid, and Q forces himself to smile when all he wants is to tuck his face into the crook of Bond's throat and work himself off against the ridges of his abdomen.  "I may have a sexual interest in you, Bond," he confesses.

Bond doesn't laugh at the stupid joke, just lifts himself on his elbows so they're close again, rubbing the tip of his nose along the line of Q's jaw until he can feel breath hot on his earlobe.  "Good."  There's something quiet and growling in Bond's voice when he speaks, and Q can feel the moment his body caves; gooseflesh breaks out across his arms as Bond continues, a plosive burst of breath damp and steaming across his skin.  "That's how this works, usually."

And if he wasn't hard before, he's there now, zero to sixty in just the time it takes Bond to touch his tongue to the thin skin of Q's throat, to bite firmly at the knob of his jaw before sucking at the soft looseness of his earlobe.  There's breath in his ear, hot and gasping, and it's the most erotic—Q shivers, lets his fingers tie themselves in Bond's shirt and clutch so he can arch his body into Bond's.  

"Oh, my Christ," Q mutters, barely stilling the whimper that bubbles up at Bond's approving chuckle.  

"Hail Mary, full of Grace," Bond agrees, and it shouldn't send a frission of arousal through Q's frame but it does, and his mum would be horrified—

"Now and at the hour of our death," Q confirms, no more able to stop the desperate, dirty groan when he angles his hips for a particularly fulsome thrust than he is able to keep his eyes open when Bond palms his arse, fingers skittering  down the center seam of his trousers in the most promising of promises. When he finally manages to peel them open again, Bond looks smug; Q wipes the look away with a well-placed hand—that is to say, a hand directly on the placket of Bond's trousers, fingers seeking the raised ridge of Bond's cock and giving a happy wriggle when they find it.  Bond retaliates with a touch—palm down and fingers lingering in places that leave no thought to the imagination, and Q's mind goes empty as he spreads his legs, sighing into the press of Bond's very precise fingers through his trousers and pants.  

Either Bond's bedded a boy before or he just knows how to touch them, or else Q's so riled by the sensation of Bond's fingers and his body that he's going to pop off like a rocket in his pants.  He lets Bond rub, hikes his leg to give him better access, but the tease is frustrating before too long and he's reaching for his fly, tugging the zip out of the way until it's just the thin heat of his pants between him and Bond's trousers and Bond wastes no time slipping his hand down the back now that he can fit his wrist between Q's body and the fabric.

"Are you going to finger me, Bond?" he asks and Bond freezes, mind clearly skipping at the idea.  He presses in through Q's pants with unerring accuracy and Q knows; he's shoving out of his trousers with liquor-loose limbs as eager as a teen on his first tryst, and then he's tangled in the cotton and making whining sounds until Bond takes pity and helps him escape.

"God," Bond breathes against his skin, struggling to get Q out of his shirt until he's bare against him.  Q feels exposed for a moment, but Bond's yanking at his own trousers impatiently, shoving them off the bed with more enthusiasm than Q's ever expected to get out of him, not that he's ever let himself imagine this situation—it seems far-fetched even now with Bond's mouth sucking bruises into the tops of his shoulders.

Then they're naked, or nearly so, and Bond is fondling him through his y-fronts with an expression that says he's invested in the damp spot of precome he's so enthusiastically exploring.  It's surreal, and Q can feel himself detaching from it, unable to believe he's got his hand on Bond's arse, Bond's tongue in his mouth, Bond's cock against his thigh pressing slow and wicked as Bond pets him.  It occurs to Q that he can—he can take off his pants and offer himself, and with the clear thought of the absolutely pissed, he does it.  It's only after, lying completely open to Bond's gaze, that he thinks he might feel embarrassed, but by then it's too late; he meets Bond's gaze with his own and doesn't flinch when Bond brushes the tips of his fingers through the straight black hair that trails from his navel to twine around the base of his cock.  Bond wraps a hand around the length of him and leans in to suck another kiss along the edge of his throat, the two points connected in ways Q's never experienced before, a live wire that traces over his heart and leaves it juddering, electrocuted.

"May I?" Bond asks quietly against his skin and it's all Q can do to nod.

Bond pulls him off with efficient strokes, spare, with a stinger twist at the end that leaves him breathy, moaning high in his throat as his hips lift from the bed.  It's only a version of whisky dick that keeps him from coming embarrassingly fast once Bond's got his hands on him; as it is, he's still only minutes into it when he finds his body curling to the side, hips fucking into Bond's hand like a rabbit's as he claws his way to orgasm.  Relief bursts over him like a summer storm, and far away he can hear himself whining as he fills Bond's waiting palm with come, almost seizing when the rough skin of his callused palm brushes the oversensitive skin of his corona.  Bond lets him guide the hand to his lips, lap the streaks from the skin, watch the dark of Bond's eyes go midnight-black when Q wraps his mouth around two thick skin-salted fingers and sucks the smell of chlorine from them.

"I want to suck you off," Q tells him, because he does.  Bond nods.

Bond has a beautiful cock.  It's thick, masculine, and brutal—just like the man it's attached to—with dark curls of gold at its base; it's attractive, and Q trips the tip of his nose along the crease of Bond's thigh toward it like a carrier pigeon coming home.  He can feel Bond's eyes on the top of his head, can see from the corner of his eye the way Bond's fingers are knotting anxiously at his sides to keep from burying themselves in Q's hair, can feel the tension in his thighs and abdomen as Q lets his breath ghost over the sensitive skin while he explores.

Sucking cock is powerful.  Q intends to wield this power.

Bond startles underneath him when Q finally lets his lips touch skin, and the sound it draws out of him is long and quietly surprised, as much a vibration skimming his skin as any actual noise.  Q hums with agreement and starts by tasting the air.

The scent of Bond's skin is almost guttural, animal and sexual, and leaves Q with a feeling like a hand has reached into his body, twisting something between his navel and the root of his cock that makes him whine and press his awakening cock into the sheets.  The taste is better.  The sounds are best; Bond gives a cracked cry, aborted and only half-realised, hungry and sharp and ringing in the air long after it's stopped.  He's breathing hard, almost panting, and Q rewards him by dragging the soft plushnesss of his inner lip against the very tip before skinning back the foreskin to kiss him properly.  Bond responds to the press of his tongue with a wounded sigh and a full-body shudder that Q finds encouraging; when Q pairs the lip and tongue, Bond loses his composure, his fingers rough at the back of Q's head, but he's petting still, twining the strands between his fingers until Q could purr from the feeling of nails on his scalp.  He opens, sinks down, and Bond writhes, spreading his knees to afford Q more room.  

"C'mon, darling," Bond murmurs, and fuck but his voice is arousing, congested with lust and desire, he sounds like Q's not the only one who's been sucking cocks. Q groans at that, grinds his hips into the bedding, and does his level best to suck Bond's brain through the end of his cock through suction and tongue tricks until Bond is clutching at his head and shoulders and moaning openly, filthy promises on his tongue as Q works. "I’m going to fuck you," Bond swears, and Q's body clenches with want.  "Slow and easy, until you're begging me to let you come.  Pet you until you're squirming.  Stroke that pretty cock until you can't stand it.  Fuck, Q, I'm going to destroy you, ruin you for other men."  It's the cockiness, that cock-sure strut of Bond's words that makes him ache; he dips his hand down the mattress to squeeze his erection and Bond groans.  "Don't you dare bring yourself off, Q.  You can—fuck, your mouth—you can touch your pretty cock, but don't you dare come just yet," Bond threatens, head falling back against the pillows.  Q gives him a lingering suck, then comes away with a pop that sounds obscene.

"You taste incredible," he says, and Bond laughs breathlessly.

"Thank you."

"Thought you should know," Q offers, before dipping back down to lap delicately at the head where it lies against Bond's belly.  He can taste Bond's arousal, the thin skin slick with spit and interest until Q can press the purse of his kiss against Bond and mouth his cock while Bond tries to direct him through a combination of gentle nudges and leading scratches at his scalp, as if Q is a cat to be influenced by a stroking.  He has to admit it works fairly well.

"I want to lick you open," Bond tells him, and Q pauses at that.

"You know I'm not a woman."

"I want to put my tongue in your arse until you cry and beg me to fuck you," Bond clarifies.

"Oh."  And Q can feel himself going faint at the prospect.  "Just checking."  Bond laughs.

"Q," Bond says when he tries to resume mouthing at Bond's cock, and Q lets him draw him away for a kiss.  He knows he tastes like cock, but Bond still licks into his mouth enthusiastically, and Q's cock is more than interested in this game as Q tries not to come at the ideas Bond's put into his head.  It takes him a moment to remember what he was about when Bond finally draws away, and it takes Bond leading his hand to his still spit-slicked cock to remind him he was in the middle of something.  Bond's fond laugh turns into a shattered groan when Q engulfs him again.

"Q," Bond tries again.  Q holds up a finger and Bond falls back to the bed, laughing.  "Q, I'm going to—"

And it's sweet of Bond to try to warn him, but that's rather the point of what he's doing, and he buckles down, sucks harder, licks wetter and uses his hand to pull as he focuses.  Bond makes a vague sound of alarm and that's all she wrote; he can't very well spit after swallowing his own, though Bond makes a discomforted sound when Q swallows around him and tries to pull him off of his oversensitive flesh.  "Aren't you good at that," Bond says when he's cooling down, and Q gives him a freebie because he can tell he's still come-dumb, struck stupid from the force of good sex.  He feels a little proud, actually.  

He tries not to raise his brows pointedly when he puts Bond's hand in his lap, and he has no idea how Bond managed to get a reputation as a lothario when he flops over bonelessly to stare at Q's cock as if it is a puzzle.  Then Bond tips back to look up at him and oh, now he knows.

It's not quite a proper handjob now, more Bond caressing his cock idly in the general direction of an orgasm, but when Bond licks at his fingers before stroking him, then brings them back to taste, even Q's startled by the wanting sound he makes.  He comes suddenly not long after that, and even though he's not impressed by his own performance Bond looks almost obnoxiously smug at that, and he lets himself flop onto Bond's chest.  Bond's arm comes up around his shoulders and he's content—warm, exhausted, and fucked out—enough to sleep.

He wakes on his side in bed by himself, with enough memory of the night before to know that he shouldn't be dressed and under the blankets in the bed on the wrong side.  Across the room, Bond is reading the paper in Romanian, and when he notices Q watching him, his eyes slide dismissively to the next page.  It hurts, despite everything, or perhaps because of it.  Q isn't sure what he was expecting, but he allows himself a moment to close his eyes and fish for sleep.  It doesn’t come.  He's been a bloody idiot, but it's time to get up, time to put emotions away and stop leaving himself vulnerable like this, because the alternative, wallowing in this feeling like a punctured lung until he feels like he can catch his breath again, means another day with Bond.  His glasses are on the nightstand, and when he slips them on he sees breakfast at the table.  He's already dressed, so he fakes a confidence he doesn't feel to retrieve a slice of toast and the cup of coffee that's waiting for him, then pulls the laptop onto the bed.  

Bond doesn't say anything as he searches Stanescu's files for any hint as to the informant's identity, doesn't even speak to him despite finishing with the paper.  He just sits silently, and Q almost wishes he'd go because having him here—having to pretend he didn't make love to the man's cock last night—has him feeling tetchy and sensitive.  It's some small consolation that Bond seems as uneasy as he is about the night before, if not as heartsore.  

He's still digging through the computer when he stumbles across the first video file; the girl looks much too young, and he can feel his lip curling in disgust.  "I didn't think he was the type," Q mutters to himself, but it just goes to show how well he knows his Eastern European terrorists, friend or not.  Bond makes a quizzical sound, and Q turns the monitor—on the screen, a blonde girl is being molested to the soundtrack of a heavy synth beat.  Her eyes look dead.

"Irina."  Bond knows her?

His confusion must show, because Bond swears, tugging the computer away to look at the file.  The version on Q's computer is a copy, but Stanescu's was original—Q can almost recognise the room it's filmed in as one of the bedrooms in Stanescu's compound.  

"Son of a bitch," Bond mutters, and then he's bringing out the satphone, their emergency link to MI:6.  This is how Bond catches Tomas Novotny, the little bird in Stanescu’s ear, without Q's help.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Thirty-four counts of statutory rape.  Conspiracy.  Cyber-terrorism.  Mallory rambles off the laundry list of charges that the Crown is going to be bringing against Novotny, but frankly, Bond can't quite bring himself to care.  The cleanup team had found Tati hanging in her gold and cream bedroom, Louboutins hanging from her feet and several of her guards shot around her; there are no loose ends, though he's sure there'll be an inquiry to assess the threat of Stanescu's criminal organization, especially now that it's obvious that it went much deeper than previously assumed.  Bond thinks of her bright smile and the curl of her hair and shakes his head—it's a bloody waste.  He tries not to think of Q.

The journey home had been easy enough—they'd gone their separate ways on the train, only bumping into each other when Bond had tried the bar to find Q railroading his herbal cigarettes in a fragrant cloud.  He'd given him the car, stepped back into the observation car, and didn't make eye contact when Q brushed through a few minutes later, headed god knows where.  There was nowhere to escape to on the train, but they managed to avoid running into each other until the transfer in Paris, when Q handed over his first class ticket for a ticket in coach and Bond had spent the entire journey listening to the businessman he'd traded it with talk about how he'd always had this kind of good luck, how tables miraculously turned up at restaurants and there was always a luxury upgrade waiting when he flew.  Bond would think that Q'd picked the most obnoxious person he could to swap with, but he can't even fault him if he had.  What he's done is unforgivable.  

He's not thinking of the curl of Q's body against his own as he slept, of the sick stab of fear that had scrubbed across Bond at the sight of Q's trust, of the scent of Q's hair and the way he'd known the score so quickly when Bond was too much of a coward to speak.  He's not hearing Q's words drunk and sweet—"All I ever wanted—"  Christ.  He can't even let himself finish the memory before he's left feeling sick.  Q's laughter at Stanescu's house, so open and happy with Tati—Bond's stomach roils.  He looks at the glass of whisky in front of him and doesn't drink.  He wouldn't be able to stop himself.  

"And Q?" Mallory asks shrewdly.  For a second, Bond feels exposed, caught out behaving badly, but Mallory can't read his mind, he knows, and he does his best not to look even half as guilty as he feels.  Mallory picks up on that, obviously.  "What did you do to the boy, Bond?"

Fucked him and left him, but he can't say that.  "I went off mission.  You warned me—he did, too—and I did it anyway.  It put both of us in danger."

"So you're saying he couldn't control you on the mission, even when he was standing there with you," Mallory says, marking the paper in front of him, and if this were occurring before the mission, before he'd seen Q put everything he had into his job, he'd have agreed, laughing, and left it at that.  He doesn't.  He can't.  

"Not at all, sir."  That catches Mallory's attention, and he draws himself up to look at him over the desk, resting his pen on the surface carefully.  "I was willful.  I wouldn't obey.  Q's leadership was exemplary, it was my own behavior that was inappropriate."  In more ways than one.

"And the fighting—did it stop?"

"I believe so," Bond tells him, if only because Q won't speak to him.  He doesn't bother to add that detail aloud.

"We had no results from the Quartermaster for the mission.  For all we can tell, he spent the entire mission socialising with known terrorists before inexplicably going offline," Mallory tells him calmly.  

There's danger in how he responds here; Bond doesn't think twice before he speaks: "I told him to do that, sir.  Even when I told him to destroy the devices, he was conscientious enough to maintain their integrity—we were never honestly unable to communicate with England, of course."

"Why?" Mallory asks, sharp.

"Because of Novotny, of course.  Who, if you'll recall, Q had pegged before we even left as a nasty character, and you and I ignored his better judgement."  There's no censure in it; Bond's voice and expression are mild, but Mallory takes the hit as intended, leaning back into his chair.

"You'd recommend him for field duty again, then?"

"Not at all."  Bond wants to be very clear on that—he doesn't want to see Q out in the field again, ever.  "He's far too valuable to the state.  England might fall if he was shot for some agent's stupid mistakes."

Mallory shifts in his seat, considering the page in front of him.  "We will take your comments under advisement, Double-oh Seven," he says finally.  Bond watches him jot a few more notes onto the page and sign with a flourish, settling the paper into the outgoing documents bin before pulling over another.  "Now tell me again about this plane we're meant to find—did you say it's in Slovakia?"

Bond spends the better part of an hour going over the details of the mission, with Mallory, careful to maintain the impression that Q's performance was faultless.  By the time he's done, he's reached the bottom of his glass twice, and the tension in his shoulders has faded to a dull ache.  His next step is TSS to return his weapon, but he knows Powell's gone home for the day, saw him leaving in the morning as he came in to debrief.  The thought of running into Q, of interacting with him, leaves him stinging.

Moneypenny's in the office when he comes out, her smile pleasant and blood red.  "So?" she asks eagerly.  She reminds him of a shark.

"So," he counters blandly.

"How did it go?" she asks.

"None of your business."  She stands behind him, stunned, as he pushes through the door and past Tanner with his stack of files, suddenly annoyed.  His problems with Q have always been a joke to them; there's nothing funny about it now.  He doesn't want to hear laughter.

TSS is deceptively calm when he gets there, unchanged and thrumming normally.  Q is nowhere to be seen.

"Where's the boss?" Bond asks one of the techs, getting a vague wave at the office for his trouble.

"Says he's not to be disturbed," the tech tells him, but Bond's never much cared for instructions.  It would be out of character to start following them now.

"I'd say something happened," Moneypenny’s disembodied voice is insisting through Q’s computer speakers when he steps in.  He closes the door behind himself, watches Q curiously.

"That much is obvious."  He can hear Mallory's dry assessment, then listens as Tanner chimes in.

"But will the bickering stop?  That's the important thing here."  Not whether he and Q had—realization washes over Bond, and shame.

"Listening in?" he asks Q.  Q shrugs, turning off the ears.

"Best way to collect information.  Information's important—good as gold, I've always thought," Q tells him, and Bond thinks of Novotny, wonders if Q has ever been someone's little bird.  "I never sold it," Q says, and they're on the same wavelength.  "Some things are too valuable to let go for less than a million."

Bond's smile at that is brief.  "I'm turning in my equipment.  Lost the earpiece, I'm afraid."

"How you managed that when I was right there with you is beyond me," Q gripes, and when Bond hands over the gun, he checks it efficiently, sliding all sliding parts, removing all removable parts, before shifting it to the corner of his desk.  "Everything looks to be in working order, Double-oh Seven.  If that's all—?"  The dismissal is cool.  Bond knows he deserves it.

"You were listening to my mission report?" he asks instead, sinking into the guest chair on the other side of the desk.  Q sighs, perching precarious and bird-like on his own chair.  He looks as if he wants to run.

"Yes."

"Hear anything interesting?" Bond asks, and Q's lips twitch slightly.  

"Exemplary, you said."

Bond is quiet, watching Q carefully.  He gauges how Q can doubt himself so deeply, how he can think he did anything less than perform admirably.  "Of course," he says finally.  "I meant it."

"You're an incomparable flirt, Double-oh Seven," Q tells him, and yes, he thinks he's okay to agree with that.  Q's smile twitches again before falling away.  "I don't want us to go back to—I will do my very best, Double-oh Seven, to put my feelings behind me.  Please be patient with me," he says carefully, voice like broken glass lovely and glittering and brittle.

"Q, I need to apologise—"

"Water under the bridge, naturally," Q says, and both of them wince.

"I didn't—"

"No.  You didn't," Q tells him firmly.  "And that was the problem.  It's best we forget about it now, Bond."  

He doesn't want to.  He thinks of the weight of Q's head on his arm, the way his hair had tickled at his sweat-sticky skin  and the bright look of an emotion that could have been something, something unnameable and potent and sticking viscous as jam, the way Q's eyes had filled with it, and he doesn't want to forget about it, doesn't deserve to remember, but doesn't want to forget.

"No."

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Q asks, and his laugh is startled, edging toward bitter at the end when he forgets to pretend grace.  "You don't get to tell me that, Bond."

"I know—"

"What do you know, Bond?  What could you possibly know that would make—"  Q stops himself, lets the words hang in the air between them heavy with the burden of meaning.    His thin chest is heaving, and Bond wonders how he could have missed all these signs before, because Q looks like he did each time they'd fought: like he's stretched thin and trembling.  Bond touches his hand. "You don't get to do this to me," Q protests, weak .

"I'm sorry," Bond tells him, and he means it.  He means it as he leaves his seat, means it as he approaches Q slow and obvious the way he'd approach a startled animal; he's careful to give Q time and a way to escape, but he doesn't.  He's shaking by the time Bond puts his hand on his shoulder, but he doesn't run, and that's all that keeps Bond from running.  Q doesn't seem to know where to look, ducking his head away from Bond's gaze, so Bond kisses his hair instead, and when Q freezes, turns slowly to look at him as if he can't believe this is real, Bond trails a series of kisses where his mouth can reach, his brow, the side of his nose, the mole on his cheek and the corner of his mouth. "I am.  I am sorry."

"Please don't if you don't—" Q asks, and Bond knows it's his own fault, but he knows he'll spend whatever this becomes reminding Q of the things about himself he should already know: that he's lovely, that he's desirable, that he's appreciated.  He puts these thoughts into his mouth and tries to pass them through to Q.  Q sinks into him with a sigh that's almost reluctant.

The glass walls of the office are thick white when he thinks to check, but he doubts anyone wonders what's happening, not when Q groans like that at the feel of Bond's hands on his arse. "Can't I just feel you up?" Bond asks, nuzzling into Q's skin as he does so.  "Bring you off with my hands and my mouth and my cock, and then I can take you out to dinner and take you to bed and do it all over again?"  Q whines at that, open-mouthed and breathy.

"I'm not a cheap date, Bond."

"I'd wash a thousand dishes for the opportunity," Bond tells him earnestly, but it's so awful that he's laughing before he's finished, and Q is laughing, too.  His mouth is a pretty red around the laugh, and Bond kisses it, lets Q guide him until they're kissing shallow but hungrily.  He gives control over to Q, and Q's sucking kisses at the hollow of his throat while Bond unbuttons his shirt; Q's shoulders are covered with love bites that make him groan at the memory, and Q looks up at him, pressing his fingertips to the worst.

"Bloody vampire," Q accuses, but his eyes say different, eager and hot and pleased.  Bond's sure there's a similar bruise being worked into the soft skin at the base of his own neck, so it's not like Q has a leg to stand on, there, and he growls, nosing his way along Q's throat again for an unmarked patch.  It's high—Q won't be able to hide it, and he wonders for a moment if he honestly wants to claim this territory in such an obvious way just yet; he settles for nipping at Q's earlobe before tracing the edge of his teeth along the skin to feel Q shiver.

And Q's still wearing the glasses from Romania but they might be weaponised; Bond touches the arm on the right side, lets his thumb rest against the rise of Q's cheekbone, and watches Q's eyes go hazy and searching when he takes them off carefully, placing them aside.  He can't resist the urge to touch the delicate skin, the wrinkles in the corners and the salt dip of the tear ducts and the sleep-bruised folds of his lids when they fall shut under his hands.  Bond could get used to the way Q's eyes snap to him, trying to focus, as if he's the only thing in the room worth looking for.  He kisses him again.

"May I touch you?" Bond asks, and Q presses against him with the line of his body, bites at his lips with clever teeth, rubs his cock hard and sure against the back of Bond's wrist until he can only turn his palm and accept the handful of it.

"Please do," Q says against his mouth, equal parts breathy and exhilarated.  Bond laughs back because really, wild horses.  Q looks perplexed, then amused, reaching down to press Bond's hand more firmly into the swell of his cock.  "You have the most amazing hands," he murmurs at the side of Bond's face, and it strikes Bond that this is what Q's like in bed: hundreds of sweet compliments and a quiet confidence that sings under his skin.

"I love the feel of you," Bond returns, and Q blooms.  He steps back, falling to his knees before Bond with hot eyes, and yes, Bond could let him use his mouth again.  He could.  He's never had a lover who's seemed to enjoy cock as much as Q, but that's not what he wants right now.  Something about it doesn't feel fair.  He guides Q back to his feet with gentle fingertips on his jaw, then leans in to kiss where they've been.  "Let me?"

He's not sure what he means—let me suck you? let me pet you? let me fuck—heat steals over him at the thought of bending Q over his desk.  He remembers the eager thrust of Q's arse against his hand and reaches behind to touch him, but Q shies away.

"It's—no, not that.  Not today," Q tells him, and Bond doesn't complain, just lets himself fall into Q's kisses again.  Whatever Q wants, whatever he's willing to share, Bond will give him.

Q has them out in a trice, wrapping them both in his palm to stroke at the same time.  Bonds vision narrows to the sight, their cocks flushed and eager together  and Q straining into his own grip.  He comes first, Q shortly after, and his legs are still wobbling when he sits bare-arsed on the edge of Q's desk to catch his breath.  Q doesn't look at him as he fishes in the pocket of his trousers for his handkerchief, wiping them clean and then tracing the cotton over Q's palm to clean away their come.  He tries not to think of Q licking it away and fails.

"Now that's out of our systems, " Q says briskly, and Bond watches as he deliberately partitions the experience away, shutting it behind what feels like bulletproof glass.

"It's not."

"Beg pardon?" Q asks, his voice suspiciously calm as he flips through the papers on his desk, but he looks aimless, lost and dizzy and confused.  He looks like Bond has punched him.

"It's not.  Out of my system."

"Then I'm sorry for you," Q tells him, shortly. "It's out of mine, and out of the realm of possibility.  It will not be happening again."

"I want it to," Bond insists, and Q rounds on him, eyes incredulous.

"And I want a way to learn to stop falling for straight men and arseholes, Mr. Bond.  We can't always get what we want."

"If you try—"

"Don't you fucking dare."  It's a controlled explosion, Q's rage bubbling up and out in truly livid bursts.  "Is this a fucking joke to you?"

"No."

"Then believe me when I say that if you don't leave my office in the next ten seconds, I will hurt you."

And Bond freezes, takes in the quivering shoulders, the bright eyes, the white knuckles.  "As badly as I've hurt you?" he asks, and Q slumps, defeated.

"Bond," he starts.  He doesn't continue, just looks away.  

“Q, I don’t—” he breathes, slowly.  “Know where to go from here.”

"You could leave.  I wouldn't hold it against you."  And he sounds like he's being honest.  Guilt tears through Bond.

"And what would happen then?"

"We'd go back to normal, or something as like it as we can manage.  It would be hard for a while; I won't be," he pauses, admitting ruefully, "I won't be nice.  Not for a long while.  But we could learn to respect each other again, rebuild a relationship based on that."

"Or?" Bond presses.

"There is no 'or'."

"Or?"

Q laughs helplessly.  "You stubborn arse."

"Or,"  Bond posits carefully, easing into Q's space until he can reach forward, taking Q's hand.  "Or I can apologise.  Take you to dinner.  We'll have a few dates and I'll be a perfect gentleman—I won't even kiss you except at your doorstep at the end of the evening—and we can give this a try.  Give us a try."

"Is there an 'us' to try?" Q asks him.  He folds when Bond kisses him then, and his mouth tastes like hope and lemons.

 


End file.
